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CDPYRIGRT DEPOSm 



Save America! 

Discussing 

The League of Nations Lunacy 
The Palace Revolution at Washington 
The First United States Dictatorship 
The Real Purpose of the Gag Laws 
The Republican Party's Supreme Duty 
The Coming Prohibition Inquisition 

A Two- Gun Book by a One-Flag American 



(Copyright, 1919, by Frank Putnam.) 



FRANK PUTNAM 

434 Public Service Building 
Milwaukee, Wis. 






^1^ 
4 



u^% 



To Theodore Roosevelt 

AMERICAN PATRIOT 

The American people do not intend to 
give up the Monroe Doctrine. We do 
not wish to undertake the responsibility 
of sending our gallant young men to 
die in obscure fights in the Balkans or 
in Central Europe. 



APR -5 i3i9 

©CI.A515140 



PREFACE 



These letters first appeared, in part, in Reedy's Mirror, 
St. Louis, Missouri. 

They sounded the first clear warning of the President's 
plan to rush this country into a British-controlled League 
of Nations, as the price of an early peace. 

The first purpose of the letters was to save this country 
from losing its independence and from being committed 
blindly to perpetual intervention in the quarrels of Europe 
and Asia. 

Their second purpose was to expose the ''palace revolu- 
tion," resulting in the first United States dictatorship, that 
has taken place at Washington during the past two years. 

Their third purpose, hinging on the second, was to re- 
establish a constitutional and republican form of govern- 
ment in the United States. 

The Democratic party is dead — self-destroyed by the 
acts herein enumerated. 

The Republican party is offered a second opportunity 
to save the Republic. If it will do that, by rejecting all 
Leagues or Alliances proposing to abridge our national 
sovereignty, and if it will immediately thereafter restore 
free thought, free speech, free press and free assemblage, 
it can enter upon a new long lease of power and public 
service. 

If the Republican party fails, we of the American rank 
and file win create another agency through which to re- 
establish American independence and the constitutional 
rights of the American people. 

FRANK PUTNAM. 
434 Public Service Building, 
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 
March 17, 1919. 



Table of Contents 



First Letter: For Free Speech 5 

Second Letter: Russia: War Indemnities: Permanent 

Peace: Nation-wide Prohibition 7 

Third Letter: The League of Nations 11 

Fourth Letter: The Coming Prohibition Inquisition: 
The Railroads: State Utility Rate Commissions: 
Our Grasping- Allies 16 

Fifth Letter: Our Soldiers in Russia: Governmental 

Extravagance: Selling America Into Bondage. . . 19 

Sixth Letter: Will the Senate Save America?: Two 

Ways to Abolish War 22 

Seventh Letter: An Opportunity Renewed: What the 
League Really Means: Hell's Pavement: What 
Has Happened: What Our Boys Are Learning: 
No Leagues or Alliances for America: The 
President's Boston Address 25 

Eighth Letter: "To Hell With Hope": Hurry Our Boys 

Homo: Capital's First Law 32 

Ninth Letter: The Issue Fairly Stated: What the 
British-Wilsonian League Means to Us: How 
America Is Lining Up: Tempting Impeachment: 
What the Whole World Wants 36 

Tenth Letter: Our Palace Revolution: Real Purposes 
of the Gag Laws: The Republican Party's Su- 
preme Historic Opportunity 45 

Appendix: Text of the Constitution of the League of 
Nations, with comment upon its significance to 
the United States: The Monroe Doctrine as Laid 
Down by Presidents Jefferson and Monroe: The 
British Origin of the League of Nations Consti- 
tution: The Lodge Resolution and List of Its 

Signers 51 

4 



Letters From the People — For Free 

Speech. 



Milwaukee, Wis., Nov. 10, 1918. 
Editor of Reedy's Mirror: 

This country wants neither Bourbonism nor Bolshevism. 
We want Americanism, in the spirit of our federal constitu- 
tion. That large section of the American press and gov- 
ernment which is trying to employ Bourbonism as a means 
of gagging and imprisoning Socialist and other radical 
leaders, for expressing their disapproval of government 
policies, is sowing the seeds of Bolshevism in this country. 

So long as all Americans retain their constitutional 
guaranties of free speech, free press and free assemblage, 
without fear of persecution by persons temporarily in con- 
trol of the government, we shall have neither Bourbonism 
nor Bolshevism. 

If our Bourbons are permitted by timid or drowsy pub- 
lic opinion to proceed with their programme of imprison- 
ing American radical leaders for exercising their constitu- 
tional right to criticise their public servants, the seeds of 
Bolshevism so implanted will presently fruit in nation- 
wide political upheaval and industrial disorder. 

I as the only non-Socialist who publicly endorsed Victor 
L. Berger's candidacy for congress from the Fifth Wiscon- 
sin district, did so not because I endorse his political pro- 
gramme; in very large part I do not accept it as desirable 
for the American people. I endorsed him for the single 
sufficient reason that he alone among the candidates in his 
district dared prison in defense of our constitutional rights 
of free speech, a free press and free assemblage. Upon 
that the fundamental issue he was, and is, by far the best 
American of them all. He received hundreds of votes on 
that issue. On that issue other hundreds who could not 
vote for him refrained from voting for his Republican and 
Democratic opponents. On that issue the Socialist party 
displaced the Democratic party as the second group, 

6 



SAVE AMERICA! 

numerically, in the Wisconsin legislature. The new legis- 
lature will contain 103 Republicans, 21 Socialists and 9 
Democrats. On that issue Socialists almost elected con- 
gressmen in two other Wisconsin districts. 

If that issue — of the right of American citizens to free 
speech, a free press and free assemblage — continues to be 
made paramount by the Bourbon elements of the old 
parties, through legal but unconstitutional persecution of 
Socialists, popular resentment, increasing in volume and 
intensity, will very soon produce results disastrous to all 
of the conservative elements of society in this state. 

The New York Times describing Victor L. Berger as a 
"pro-German Socialist" and intimating that upon the 
ground of his "pro-Germanism" he might with propriety 
be excluded by the House of Representatives from the seat 
in that body to which his district has elected him, is cruelly 
untruthful and unjust. I speak with personal knowledge 
antedating the war by several years. Had Mr. Berger been 
in fact "pro-German," not one of the hundreds of old- 
fashioned Americans, his neighbors and acquaintances, 
who voted for him, would have done so. We knew that no 
other man in American public life had more consistently, 
or for an equal number of years, waged a war of destruc- 
tion against the autocratic principle, nor entertained a 
livelier detestation for the autocrats in person, than Mr. 
Berger. We know that no other man more profoundly re- 
joices in the downfall of the Central European autocracies, 
and the emergence in their stead of democratic republics. 
Mr. Berger, believing that many Americans favored the 
war for mercenary reasons, had a constitutional right to 
utter and publish that opinion — any enactment to the con- 
trary notwithstanding. I, believing that profiteering greed 
was only a minor factor and that the great war was in fact 
a crusade in behalf of world-wide democracy, had an 
equal constitutional right to utter and publish my opinion, 
and ,did so. My constitutional right to advise my public 
servants of my desires can stand only so long as Mr. Ber- 
ger' s equal right to advise them of his contrary opinion. 

6 



SAVE AMERICA! 

When either can be suppressed by a majority tem- 
porarily in power, the other can as readily be suppressed 
in the event that the suppressed minority shall become a 
majority — as it infallibly will do, if such suppression be not 
discontinued. Defending Mr. Berger's right of free speech, 
a free press and free assemblage, I defended my own like 
right, and that of every other sovereign citizen of the 
republic. 

Our government should dismiss the indictments against 
Mr. Berger. The House of Representatives should admit 
him to the seat to which his people have elected him. The 
supreme court should vindicate the constitutional guaran- 
ties of American citizens. The great journals of the coun- 
try should call a halt upon the persecution of loyal, if mis- 
taken, citizens for opinion's sake. Eugene V. Debs, im- 
prisoned for exercising his constitutional right of free 
speech, will add 2,000,000 votes to the Socialist total in the 
next presidential election. The government of the United 
States of America cannot long be administered in the spirit 
of a Texas convict labor camp. Americans never will be 
slaves. If need be — if our Bourbons insist upon the issue — 
we shall waive all other issues and fight as gladly for the 
preservation of our individual liberties here at home as our 
sons have fought to destroy autocracies on the continent 
of Europe. Never doubt it. 

PRANK PUTNAM. 



American Opinion. 



Milwaukee, Dec. 24, 1918. 
Editor of Reedy's Mirror: 

Our country is by way of becoming committed to 
policies of vast importance, upon which there is no large 
body of clearly defined public opinion. I conceive it there- 
fore to be a duty of authentic Americans to express their 
opinions upon these policies, so far as may be possible, in 
order that our public servants may know to what extent 

7 



S A V E AMERICA ! 

the American people will support them in the application 
of these policies. Here, by your leave, are my opinions 
upon 

Russia: Our soldiers are in Russia, killing and being 
killed, for no better purpose than to assure payment to 
British, French and American investors of interest and 
principal of bonds issued by the late Russian autocracy. 
Joined with the armed forces of Japan, Great Britain, 
France, Bohemia and GERMANY in the sordid service of 
International Finance, American soldiers are helping to de- 
prive the Russian majority of the fruits of their successful 
revolution — their only possible compensation for frightful 
losses sustained while waging war as the allies of the 
British, French and American peoples. This situation is a 
gross and damnable betrayal of America's past and Russia's 
present desire for human liberty; America's soldiers should 
be withdrawn from Russia forthwith. America's mighty 
influence should be exerted to procure instant withdrawal 
from Russia of the armies of Japan, Great Britain, France, 
Bohemia and GERMANY. The American government 
should recognize the Soviet government of Russia, and 
should use its influence to procure like recognition from 
Great Britain, France, Italy and our other governments 
associated in the war upon the late Central Empires. If 
our government takes these steps, it will win the approval 
of 90 per cent of the American people. If it does not take 
these steps, it will merit and receive the strong disapproval 
of a very large majority of the American people. 

War Indeimiitles: United States senators who urge our 
government to demand indemnity from the Central Em- 
pires ask us to repudiate the unselflsh pledge with which 
our President led us into the world war, and without 
which he never could have led us into it. British and 
French and Italian statesmen who clamor for the collec- 
tion of fifty to two hundred and fifty billions of indemnity 
from the German people are mentally inhabitants of the 
past — of a world order gone never to return. No people 
wanted the war. No government that entered the war had 

8 



SAVE AMERICA! 

a mandate from its people to enter it. None could have 
obtained such mandate, had any asked for it. Governments 
of that degree of irresponsibility to their people belong- to 
the past. Hereafter there will be none of that kind. Only 
such g-overnments could pledg-e their peoples, defeated in 
war, to accept economic slavery for generations in order 
to pay for the blunders and crimes of their rulers. Only 
such governments, victorious in war, could execute peace 
bargains sentencing the defeated peoples to economic 
slavery for generations. No people on earth wants any 
other people reduced to slavery. It is now too well under- 
stood by the masses of mankind that the presence any- 
where on ear^h of even one slave menaces the freedom of 
every other human being. 

Permanent Peace: The only possible effective guar- 
anty of permanent peace among the peoples of the earth 
is the establishment, by and for each people, of a govern- 
ment which will be in fact the servant and not the master 
of the people. Hitherto there has been no such govern- 
ment on earth; hereafter, in the due process of time, the 
day is coming when there will be none of any other kind. 
A League of Nations, each governed as all nations hitherto 
have been governed, by a dominant class imposing its will 
upon the majority of the people, would afford only a most 
illusory guaranty of permanent peace. A League of Na- 
tions such as President Wilson appears to have in mind 
would serve only to delay the coming of a league of free 
and self-governing peoples, which alone can supply a sub- 
stantial guaranty against international war. 

Nation- Wide Proliibition : The driving force behind 
the campaign for nation-wide prohibition is the Anti- 
Saloon League. The Anti-Saloon League is John D. Rocke- 
feller. The League was organized and financed by Standard 
Oil interests in Ohio, nearly a generation ago, as a club 
with which to defeat the gubernatorial candidacy of At- 
torney General Frank Monnett, who had successfully 
prosecuted Standard Oil under Ohio's anti-trust act. There- 
after, in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas and other 

9 



SAVE AMERICA! 

states the Anti-Saloon Leag-ue was employed as a means 
of defeating the political ambitions of public officials who, 
by attempts to enforce the people's laws ag-ainst Standard 
Oil and its affiliated interests, won the hostility of John D. 
Rockefeller and his associates. I speak from hearsay 
knowledge of the facts as to the other states named, from 
personal and intimate knowledge of political campaigns in 
Texas. The method of the League was simple: to divide 
the voters upon the "moral issue" as a means of prevent- 
ing a division upon economic issues. Attorney General R. 
V. Davidson of Texas, who forced Standard Oil interests to 
pay the state a fine of more than $3,000,000 for flagrant 
violation of its anti-trust act, and who by every precedent 
of Texas political history was unbeatable in the subsequent 
race for the governorship, was in fact beaten in exactly 
the way described. The managers of the prohibition move- 
ment were in that and subsequent campaigns in Texas 
allied with the agents of the Oil Trust, the Lumber Trust, 
the railroad, telegraph and telephone interests. In two 
gubernatorial campaigns, following the defeat of General 
Davidson, I supplied the publicity material — addressed di- 
rectly to several hundred thousand voters, most of whom 
knew that I had little and wanted nothing (except to pre- 
serve for myself and others that personal liberty without 
which all other so-called "freedom" is a damned mockery) 
— which defeated the candidates of the Anti-Saloon League- 
corporation crow^d. In later elections the Standard Oil 
Anti-Saloon League element was successful, aided by the 
stupidity and lawlessness of the liquor interests. John D. 
Rockefeller is the smartest politician and ablest business- 
man this country has ever produced. There is in Texas 
today a lawyer and businessman of great ability — a fighter 
from hat crown to boot heels. He supplied most of the 
evidence upon which the federal government got a supreme 
court decision "dissolving" the oil trust. He knew^ Texas 
politics better than any other man in Texas. "Who," I 
once asked this man, "is Edward M. House, who appears 
to have captured the President's confidence more fully 
than any other advisor?" "House," he replied, "is the 

10 



SAVE AMERICA! 

messenger from 2 6 Broadway to the White House." I do 
not profess to know anything of Mr. House's affairs, per- 
sonally, but I would bet my overcoat upon the accuracy 
and truthfulness of this man's information. In this con- 
nection I recall that in 1912 the kaiser's government was 
kicking Standard Oil out of Germany — making the oil busi- 
ness in Germany a governmental monopoly. 

The recent disclosures in a congressional inquiry that 
John D. Rockefeller and associated interests had largely 
financed one of the most active "loyalty leagues," engaged 
in procuring the completest possible suppression of the 
radical press of America during the war, admits another 
momentary gleam of light upon the secret and danger- 
ously reactionary political activities of this American 

Machiavelli. 

FRANK PUTNAM. 



More American Opinion. 



Another letter titled as above, by the same writer, ap- 
peared in The Mirror of January 2. That one dealt chiefly 
with affairs domestic — free speech, prohibition, etc. This 
goes wider afield. The editor of The Mirror does not see 
things altogether as does Mr. Putnam, but the editor of 
The Mirror does believe that there isn't enough criticism 
of the administration policy, chiefly because the seized 
cables shape opinion in the presentation of the news. The 
editor heard a man rejoice the other day that now that 
Roosevelt is gone Wilson will have no opposition. The 
worst thing that can happen to Wilson and the country is 
the disappearance of vigorous opposition. Popular com- 
plaisance is a grave danger. We need Roosevelts, Putnams 
and Reeds. — [Editor's Note.] 

Milwaukee, Wis., Jan. 10, 1919. 
Editor of Reedy's Mirror: 

I respectfully submit the following additional opinions 
upon current events: 

11 



S A V E AMERICA ! 

The lieague of Nations: That it is being urged by the 
controlling class in the principal nations primarily as a 
means of collecting principal and interest of the war debts 
of the world; secondarily, as a means of enabling Interna- 
tional Finance more easily and surely to control the pro- 
duction and distribution of new wealth — goods and com- 
modities — throughout the world. That these practical aims 
are being camouflaged with preachments regarding the 
League's desirability as a means of preventing future wars 
between nations. 

Whether it would be better or worse for mankind to 
have to pay these gigantic debts out of the product of its 
labor during the next century I am not wise enough to 
know — nor even to declare a positive opinion. My feeling 
is that it would be best for mankind if all the war debts of 
the nations could be canceled by agreement of the peoples, 
and a new start, with a clean slate, made by everybody. So 
strongly do I entertain this feeling that, although every dol- 
lar of capital I possess is invested in the war bonds of the 
United States, I should be glad to vote for the canceling of 
all of the world's war debts, if given an opportunity to do 
so. I am aware that, regarded as a business problem, it 
is one of enormous complexity; that such a step would in- 
volve widespread unsettling influences affecting every in- 
dustrial and commercial process throughout the world. Yet 
I feel that after the thing had been done, and the pain of 
it borne, we should still find ourselves possessing the earth, 
still able to produce and distribute wealth, and enriched 
with a sense of relief from an intolerable burden. On the 
other hand, it is perhaps best for mankind in the long run 
that in this as in all previous stages of human history, hu- 
man crimes and blunders should be paid for in expiatory 
toil — as the only way humanity can acquire intelligence. 

It seems to me that the issue dividing the old world in 
which we all dwelt prior to 1914, and the new world which 
the risen serfs of Eastern Europe and the Central Empires 
are now trying to bring into being, is roughly suggested in 
the preceding paragraph. 

12 



SAVE AMERICA! 

I have no doubt that International Finance — more real 
and more powerful than any political government — is ac- 
tively at work in the Peace Congress preliminaries, in 
banking and business associations, in such portion of the 
world's newspaper press as it controls, and in various other 
seen and unseen ways, doing its utmost to produce a peace 
treaty under which mankind will be pledged to pay, out of 
its future labor proceeds, the principal and interest of all 
of the national war debts, including those of czarist Russia 
and imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary, Mind I say 
"pledged." Whether mankind, if so pledged by its largely 
self-appointed representatives at the peace-making, will 
thereafter meekly submit to bear the burden of that pledge, 
only time can tell. My own guess is that humanity, if so 
pledged without its knowledge or consent, will soon take 
charge of its political governments and cast off the burden. 

I have lately seen in print sober discussion by leading 
American bankers of a proposal — one of those "feelers" 
from time to time put forth in the press in behalf of great 
politicians and of International Finance — that the Peace 
Congress should arrange a plan for pooling all of the war 
debts of the Allied countries, including the United States 
of America, so that the total debt of these countries should 
be repaid on equal terms by all of the citizens or subjects 
of the governments so associated. It has been proposed not 
that the division should be made on a flat population basis, 
but that this basis shall be "corrected," as the engineers 
say, to take into account also the relative wealth of the 
several associated countries and the comparative ability of 
the average citizen of each to contribute to the payment of 
the total war debt. Under such a plan, the portion of the 
total Allied national war debt which would be allocated to 
the United States would greatly exceed not merely our ac- 
tual war debt, but would still more emphatically exceed, 
in the average share allocated to each American citizen, 
the average share allocated to the average citizen of Great 
Britain, of France, of Russia, of Belgium, of Serbia, of 
Italy, and of Rumania. 

13 



X 



SAVE AMERICA! 

When I state that it is the apparent purpose of Inter- 
national Finance to provide, if it can, through a League of 
Nations for the payment of principal and interest of the 
war debts of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria, as 
well as of the Allied countries, I draw my conclusion from 
the evident desire of International Finance to suppress in 
Russia, in Germany, in Austria-Hungary and in Bulgaria, 
as well as in the Allied countries, those elements of the 
population which are trying to establish new political gov- 
ernments pledged to repudiation of war debts, to occu- 
pancy and use as the only just titles for holding land, 
and to numerous other radical proposals. It appears to be 
the purpose of International Finance, speaking through the 
statesmen who obviously represent its desires, to impose 
upon the conquered countries, and upon Russia, political 
government which may be depended upon to enforce 
payment of the war debts, to facilitate the completer mas- 
tery of international commerce by the present ruling class, 
and in general to retain as completely as possible the or- 
ganization of society which existed throughout the world 
prior to 1914. 

It occurs to me as desirable, and I venture to suggest it, 
that newspaper editors who read Reedy's Mirror, or so 
many of them as may be free to do so, can serve their 
country well by encouraging public discussion of these al- 
most wholly suppressed factors in the news of the time. 
I am fifty years old. I have been an interested student of 
and an active participant in American politics for thirty 
of those years, in the Atlantic coast region, the South, the 
Pacific coast section and the Northern States. I have found 
that my mental and emotional reactions to current political 
and economic proposals of major interest were as a rule 
substantially like those of the majority of my fellow citi- 
zens. If I have sometimes — as in this instance — "seen 
things coming" a little earlier than others, it is perhaps 
because the nature of my employment required me to look 
ahead and see what was coming. 

I oppose the formation of a League of Nations by gov- 
ernments which are controlled by the present ruling class 

14 



SAVE AMERICA! 

— which means, in the main, by International Finance. I 
oppose such a League because I believe that if it achieved 
real power to enforce its decisions, it would make and en- 
force decisions preventing any further advancement of hu- 
manity, anywhere on earth, upon the long forward road 
toward genuine democracy. It would be primarily inter- 
ested, as the governments which seek to create it are now 
primarily interested, in maintaining the status quo — things 
as they are; and it would be able to oppose any change in 
any country with the armed forces of all the countries 
members of the League. We are gradually losing, in our 
own country, all of those rights and privileges of local self- 
government which were once our chief pride and our chief 
distinction in contrast with other, older countries ruled 
by centralized bureaucracies, oligarchies and semi-despot- 
isms. I challenge the whole process of extinguishing local 
self-government and substituting for it federalized and 
centralized absentee rule as one subversive of the American 
Constitution, and as a deadly betrayal of American liberties. 
I hope and pray that there may be found in the senate 
of the United States a sufEicient number of men wise 
enough and brave enough, and patriotic enough, to reject 
any treaty submitted by the World Peace Congress which 
may attempt to barter away this country's right of self- 
determination in ANY particular, in exchange for the du- 
bious privilege of strengthening the present control of In- 
ternational Finance upon the lives, the labor product and 
the liberty of the masses of mankind. I entertain no 
doubt whatever that, should any such treaty be reported 
to the American senate, and approved by that body, the 
men and the parties responsible for such action would be 
swept into political oblivion not later than the second suc- 
ceeding general election. 

FRANK PUTNAM. 



15 



SAVE AMERICA ! 

American Opinion. 

Third Installment. 



Milwaukee, Jan. 29, 1919. 
Editor of Reedy's Mirror: 

Herewith I respectfully offer a third installment of 
opinions upon current events — opinions which may be of 
interest for the reason that they are very likely held by 
many old-fashioned Americans. My excuse for offering 
what I regard as typically American opiniqns is that in 
these extraordinary days our public servants no longer 
seek our opinion: if they are to receive the benefit of 
our counsel, we must needs thrust it before them in the 
public prints. 

The Coming; Proliibition Inquisition: Prompt, intelli- 
gent, concerted action by liberty-loving citizens at Wash- 
ington and at the several State capitals can perhaps pre- 
vent the prohibition lunatics and their Big Business back- 
ers from inflicting upon this country the worst of the in- 
quisitorial outrages which they are planning to inflict. 
The laws under which the Federal amendment is to be 
enforced are not yet enacted. They are being drafted. 
The bone-dry madmen purpose if they can to make it a 
crime for an honorable citizen to possess for his own use 
wine, beer or any other liquor, which he in good faith and 
under the protection of his country's constitution and its 
laws purchased prior to the adoption of the amendment. 
They propose to create an irresponsible army of Federal 
and State spies, informers and constables armed with 
power of search and seizure, to enter any citizen's home at 
will, on proof or on suspicion — as has been done hereto- 
fore in some of the American commonwealths under State- 
wide prohibition laws. It is my opinion that in the Federal 
Congress, and in many of the State legislatures, there is a 
majority of members who, although they may have voted 
for the Federal amendment, would now vote for laws to 
enforce it with some slight regard for the rights of the 
majority of Americans who are not prohibitionists. The 

16 



SAVE AMERICA ! 

experiment seems to me worth trying. If the prohibition 
extremists have their own way unopposed, the laws which 
they will have enacted will plung-e this country into some- 
thing very like Bolshevism as surely as night follows day. 

State Utility Rate Commissions : A State Public Service 
Commission composed of politicians and other persons 
ignorant of public utility operation is preposterous. Every 
such commission should be composed of one skilled utility 
engineer, one high-class accountant and one first-grade 
lawyer. It should be controlled solely and automatically 
by the facts, in raising or lowering utility rates. It should 
command a corps of engineers and accountants large 
enough to enable it quickly to learn the fair value of all 
utility systems within its jurisdiction. It should thereafter 
require each to make sworn monthly reports of earnings 
and expenditures. Its traveling auditors should at frequent 
intervals visit, inspect and check up the operations of the 
utilities — just as bank examiners visit and check up banks. 
It should be required to regulate not only rates but wages. 
If public opinion endorses public utility employes' demands 
for higher pay, it should do so with knowledge that it must 
itself pay the higher wages in higher rates for the service. 
Finally, the commission, in possession at 30 -day intervals 
of exact knowledge of utility earnings and expenditures, 
should, at six months or yearly intervals, readjust rates up- 
ward or downward, in slight graduations, to assure in- 
vestors against loss if net earnings show a tendency to 
decline; to assure utility customers against too high rates 
if earnings show a tendency to increase beyond the require- 
ments of the fair yearly return contemplated by the State 
law. The whole cost of supporting the public service com- 
mission should be charged against the utility companies, 
and by them included in their rates and fares. State rate, 
service, financial and accounting regulation of the business 
— if efficient and helpful — is fairly to be included as a part 
of the cost of the service. 

Our Grasping Allies: The cables bring swift confirma- 
tion and elaboration of my recent letter to Reedy's Mirror 

17 



SAVE AMERICA! 

forecasting their desire that this country shall help pay 
their war debts, besides paying its own. Mark Sullivan, 
in the current Collier's, warns us to look out for a plea 
that the eight billions of dollars which our government 
loaned to its allies in the war against the Central Powers 
shall be regarded not as loans but as gifts. I shall be in 
favor of this when England recognizes Ireland as a free 
and sovereign republic; when France quits trying to grab 
German territory west of the Rhine; when the Allied 
Powers recognize the right of the Russian masses to estab- 
lish their own form of government; when our presidential 
Don Quixote gets wise to the fact that he was hired to work 
for the United States of America and not to chase illusory 
phantoms of Utopian peace all over Europe. We Americans 
may be, as George Bernard Shaw once termed us, "a nation 
of villagers"; our submission to the bone-dry witch burners 
seems to prove it; but I question whether we are such utter 
suckers as to make Great Britain a free gift of the $4,000,- 
000,000 we loaned her, considering that Great Britain 
emerges from the war vastly richer and more powerful 
than when she entered it, and we come out of it with 
no material gains to show for our more than thirty 
billions of expenditure. There are times when, reading the 
senatorial debates, I feel as if I were reading the proceed- 
ings of the British House of Lords. Then Hiram Johnson of 
California, or one of the few other real Americans in the 
Senate, takes the floor, and the painful illusion passes. 
Speaking of Hiram Johnson reminds me that when he was 
governor of California, and hotly engaged in procuring 
anti-Japanese legislation out there, I called on him and 
argued that instead of trying to bar out the Japanese farm- 
ers who would enrich California with ample cheap food, 
he should be trying to prevent any further immigration 
into California of rich but village-minded persons from 
the small cities and towns of Iowa, Kansas, Illinois, Indiana 
and the rest of the Middle West. "The Japs," I said, "will 
produce food. The Yaps won't produce anything, and they 
will shortly destroy all of California's characteristic charm 
of gaiety and liberality by voting the state as dry as the 

18 



SAVE AMERICA! 

inside of a drum." And they have done it, as their kind 
did it in Missouri, in direct defiance and betrayal of a re- 
cent popular mandate against state-wide prohibition. 

PRANK PUTNAM. 



American Opinion. 

Fourth Installment. 



Milwaukee, Wis., Feb. 10, 1919. 
Editor of Reedy's Mirror: 

Here, by your leave, is more American opinion. 

Our Soldiers in Russia: Prazier Hunt, an American 
war correspondent of high standing, confirms in a long dis- 
patch to this day's Chicago Tribune all that I offered as a 
personal opinion in Reedy's Mirror three weeks ago. Our 
soldiers were sent to Russia not to guard war supplies, as 
alleged; Mr. Hunt reports they found none there to guard. 
They were sent there to help smash the Russian revolu- 
tion, and to enforce payment by the Russian people of vast 
bond issues floated by the Czarist government and sold in 
England, Prance and the United States. They have been 
fooled, as their people here at home have been fooled, by 
lying statements issued upon governmental authority. 
They hate their work — as their people here at home hate 
it. They feel their mission to be a betrayal of the cause of 
human freedom — as their people here at home feel it to be. 
They have been placed and kept under command of British 
army officers, and made to do the dirty work of the British 
imperialists and of the international bankers. They have 
been forced to serve as strike-breakers on a street railway 
in a Russian city. They have been forced to arrest Russian 
civil officials whose official policies — in purely internal af- 
fairs — were displeasing to the British autocrats command- 
ing the Allied expedition. Nearly 200 of them have been 
killed and a larger number badly wounded, doing these 
things which they detested. They want to come home. 
How long will the American people stand for a govern- 

19 



SAVE AMERICA! 

mental policy that makes brave American soldiers the 
pawns and victims of the international Shylocks and of the 
British Imperialists? God knows, for God alone knows 
whether the old American spirit any longer survives in a 
people capable of endorsing" or submitting to the arbitrary 
abolition, by their public servants, of the individual liber- 
ties and the local self-government that made America 
glorious in her youth. 

Governmental Extravagance: With Southern Bourbon 
lawyer-politicians dominating both branches of congress 
and the federal executive, our government at Washington 
is hurrying this country rapidly toward bankruptcy. Ex- 
travagance never equalled in any country in any period of 
history; waste and profiteering by governmental favorites 
upon a scale never before imagined — and made more odi- 
ous by contrast with a scoundrelly penny-pinching mean- 
ness toward the great army of soldiers mustered out, broke 
and jobless, in a time of grave depression; an apparent 
utter want of appreciation of the value of a dollar or of the 
source of the billions of dollars appropriated — these char- 
acterize the Democratic administration's management of 
the country's affairs at a time when intelligent economy is 
most urgently needed. It is my deliberate opinion that, if 
a halt be not soon enforced by public demand, American 
bondholders will presently be asking the courts to appoint 
a receiver for the American government. 

Selling America Into Bondage: The misuse of a few 
thousand of our conscripted American soldiers in Russia, 
to serve the pocket interests of British, French and Ameri- 
can bankers, is a symbol of the essential meaning of the 
proposed League of Nations. Each day that passes makes 
this more clear. The framers of the League propose that 
this country shall become financially and militarily re- 
sponsible for widely scattered, semi-civilized peoples whose 
whole history is one of intermittent warfare. This means 
that tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of American 
boys would have to spend years of their lives fighting and 
doing garrison duty in those regions thousands o'f miles 

20 



SAVE AMERICA! 

from home. It means that if American boys refused to 
volunteer for a service so insane, they must be and would 
be conscripted for it. It means that American taxpayers 
would be forced in perpetuity to yield hundreds of millions 
of conscripted revenue to finance these Quixotic, these in- 
sane, these madly un-American undertakings throughout 
the world. American public opinion can not too quickly 
serve notice upon the American President and his hand- 
picked associates at the peace-making that they are desired 
to abandon their Utopian schemes, to withdraw from the 
service of International Finance whose ends they are con- 
sciously or unconsciously serving at the sacrifice of Ameri- 
ca's highest interest, to make a speedy peace for America's 
account, and to come home bringing with them the Ameri- 
can army. They have no warrant thus to attempt to sell 
America into bondage to the international money-lenders. 
They can never get away with it, if, and God send that it 
be true, America still retains one spark of her old free 
spirit. Just as every man's pains are the true price of his 
own or his father's sins, so Europe reaped as Europe 
sowed. Europe is unrepentent, unregenerate — at the top. 
Not Germany alone, but all other European countries, with 
the single exception of Russia. The Russian masses see the 
light of liberty; they are striving desperately, with a world 
controlled by the International Shylocks organized against 
them, to attain that light. To hell with Europe! Our 
destiny is here upon our own continent. Here we must 
win or lose. Let Europe stew in its own stench until 
Europe repents of its sins of greed and age-old mutual 
hatreds. Never again should an American soldier be sent 
by an American government to intervene in any European 
quarrel upon any other ground than the defense of our 
own American rights. That was the only possible ground 
for our intervention in this war. It was the real ground 
and the sufficient one. The allegation that we went to 
war, or ever should have gone to war, in order to "make 
the world safe for democracy," or to enforce fair play 
between alien peoples, none of whom cared or cares a 
damn for us, except for what they can get out of us, was 

21 



SAVE AMERICA! 

either idiot idealism or rank hypocrisy. Believe me, sir, 

I have no monopoly of such opinions. I assure you they 

are held by eight of every ten real Americans with whom 

I discuss these subjects. 

FRANK PUTNAM. 



American Opinion. 

Fifth Installment. 



Milwaukee, Wis., Feb. 16, 1919. 
Editor of Reedy's Mirror: 

Believing that our country is todaj'- in imminent danger 
of being committed to a crazy dream of Utopian world 
empire, and believing that at such a time it is the highest 
patriotic duty of every real American to sound a warning, 
I submit these additional American opinions: 

Will the Senate Save America? Publication of the 
League of Nations' proposed constitution confirms my fore- 
cast of its essential purpose. That purpose is to destroy 
the American Republic and make it the ally or subsidiary 
of the British Empire, to serve the ends of International 
Finance. The American Senate, with power to confirm or 
reject treaties, can save the United States, and will save it 
if sufiicient pressure of public opinion can be brought to 
bear upon its members quickly enough. 

If the President has his way, the Senate will, within the 
next thirty days, declare its sanction of his Quixotic 
scheme, and so doing will pass sentence of death upon the 
United States of America as a free and sovereign nation. 
Acceptance of membership in the League as planned will 
automatically commit the United States to participation in 
every future war in Europe, Asia or Africa — and will 
assure many such wars because of its declared purpose to 
suppress revolts with arm.ed force. It will automatically 
admit every other nation member of the League to partici- 
pation in determining our affairs and those of our sister 
Republics in the two Americas. It will terminate the Mon- 

22 



SAVE AMERICA! 

roe Doctrine as a matter of course. It will mean the aa- 
sumption by this country, subject to League dictation, of 
financial and military guardianship of alien and far-distant 
peoples, wliG will hate us, and rightly so, as every subject 
people hates its alien masters. It will mean the yearly 
expenditure, for these foreign adventures, of hundreds of 
millions, or billions, of dollars drawn in taxes from the 
labor product of the American people. It will mean the 
conscription of hundreds of thousands of America's young 
men to waste years of their lives, or lose them, policing 
far-distant alien peoples who hate them. And after all the 
waste of life and money, it will mean a disastrous failure 
and a bitter disappointment. Because it is meant not to 
serve but to exploit the masses of mankind. 

Proof of this opinion will be supplied, if the League 
materializes even briefly, by its instant demand for the 
payment by the Russian, German, Austrian, Turkish and 
other unwilling peoples of every dollar of the back-break- 
ing national debts imposed upon them by their late mas- 
ters and used chiefly to keep them in bondage. It means, 
in short, to revive the barbarities of the English debtors' 
prison, and to inclose therein whole peoples, guarded and 
driven to their tasks by our sons conscripted for that vile 
service. Back of all its camouflage of pious and pacifistic 
pretenses, the League of Nations is Shylock preparing to 
demand his pound of flesh, and it is nothing else under 
heaven. 

It is for the Senate of the United States, now and 
quickly, to determine whether our country shall escape the 
net that is being spread for it by the allied money lenders 
of London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna and New York. I have 
no hope of any Senator from the South. They are, with 
few if any exceptions, pro-English hereditarily. They are 
inherently and traditionally hostile to the rights of labor. 
They are with few exceptions lawyer-politicians trained 
to the service and the viewpoint of corporate wealth. They 
are "yellow-dog" political partisans, prouder of an un- 
broken record of party "loyalty" than of independent ac- 

23 



SAVE AMERICA! 

tion, however patriotic, transcending party lines; they will 
"stand by" the President because he is "their" President, 
their party's president. They are, above all else, pro- 
foundly provincial, incredibly ignorant, many of them, of 
the great world beyond their State or national boundaries. 

More is to be hoped of Johnson of California, Borah of 
Idaho, Lodge of Massachusetts, Chamberlain of Oregon, 
Cummins of Iowa, Reed of Missouri, and others who 
derive from the root stock of real Americanism Middle, 
West, North and East; men whose forbears have dwelt 
upon this continent so long that they have no inherited 
favor for any European country dominating their love for 
this country. These men can save the Republic if they 
will shatter the Wilsonian hypnosis by challenging it 
squarely in behalf of all that Americans for 300 years 
upon this continent have labored, sacrificed, endured and 
died for. 

I for one do not wish to live to see the day on which 
my country consents to the raising of any other banner 
above the flag of my fathers and my sons. I warn my 
servants at Washington, first and foremost the President, 
fresh from his imperial honors in foreign lands and from 
his too intimate contact with kings and lords, that if and 
when they dishonor Old Glory by subordinating it to the 
flag of any League of Nations whatsoever, they will be 
promptly and everlastingly rebuked and repudiated by 
their masters, the free American people. 

Two Ways to Abolish War: The League of Nations 
plan which our President brings back from his European 
palace with the demand that we accept it on the instant 
as his imperial pleasure, proposes to abolish war by using 
armed force. Were he ever so little a philosopher, as he 
is ever so dangerously a rhetorician, he would know the 
impossibility of enforcing perpetual peace among nations 
by mere preponderance of arms. I credit him with entire 
sincerity, but I regard him as that most dangerous of 
sincere men — the superhumanly wilful and stubborn 
fanatic obsessed with a Utopian panacea and momentarily 

24 



SAVE AMERICA! 

possessed of governmental power greater by far than that 
of any other man on earth. I do not believe he would 
knowingly serve the ends of the international money lend- 
ers as against the masses of mankind. 

Upon that issue I may be mistaken, but I prefer to be- 
lieve that our President means well. Whether he means 
well or ill, he is upon the wrong road to procure lasting 
peace between the peoples. The right road is the road of 
liberty and social justice. At the end of this road the 
Temple of a League of Peoples awaits humanity's coming 
to occupy and possess it. Peoples genuinely free, actually 
self-governing; not as now ruled each by a little all-power- 
ful owning and governing class — the class which proposes 
to weld the Allies of the world into a League of Nations 
pledged to conscript the people's labor and their lives for 
the enforcement of its will upon them; for the violent sup- 
pression of their revolutionary aspirations; for the collec- 
tion of more than two hundred billions of dollars of na- 
tional debts, with as much or more of interest added, out 
of their labor product during the next one hundred years. 

If American Senators have any regard for their oaths of 
oflace, for the safety and welfare of the Republic, or for 
their own political futures, they will lose no time in de- 
nouncing this monstrous scheme to destroy American lib- 
erty and to subordinate American sovereignty to a League 
certain ultimately, if not from the beginning, to be domi- 
nated by foreign governments which ardently dislike us, 
envy us and which must contemptuously regard us as the 
easiest to pluck of any suckers that ever came down Time's 
highway. FRANK PUTNAM. 



American Opinion. 

Sixth Installment. 



Milwaukee, Wis., Feb. 22, 1919. 
Editor of Reedy's Mirror: 

Well aware that you do not agree with much that I 
write, and profoundly appreciating your generous welcome 

25 



SAVE AMERICA ! 

to contrary views, I submit herewith further opinions of 
possible interest and value to your readers: 

An Opportunity Renewed: The Republican party and 
the loyal Northern Democrats saved the Republic in the 
1860s. Only the Republican party and the loyal Northern 
Democrats can save the Republic in 1919. Substantially 
the same political element that attempted to destroy the 
Republic in 1861 by disrupting it, is now attempting to 
destroy its sovereignty in England's interest by merging 
this country into an International Empire miscalled a 
League of Nations — an empire certain if created to be con- 
trolled by Europe and virtually certain to be dominated by 
the British Empire. Under the League's constitution as 
brought back by President Wilson the British Empire and 
its chief provinces and dependencies would have six votes 
in the "body of delegates" as against only one vote for the 
United States or any other member state. The Supreme 
Council would determine the size and strength of each 
member nation's army and navy — starting with the agree- 
ment that the British navy shall always be large enough — 
as it is today — to control the waters of th*6 earth. This 
Council would appoint each of the stronger member na- 
tions a "mandatory" to police one or more of the weaker 
peoples: the United States, it has been agreed by the Peace 
conferrees, shall accept a "mandatory" to police Armenia, 
a portion of the old Turkish Empire. (One of my soldier 
sons writes me from Prance that his regiment has had 
intimations that it is to be sent to Armenfa as a part of 
the American army of occupation, if the League scheme 
succeeds). No nation could decline service as a "manda- 
tory" without inviting the hostility of its associate nations. 
No nation could withdraw from the League except with the 
unanimous consent of the other nations members of the 
League. Every nation member of the League must sur- 
render to the Supreme Council of the League its own 
power of decision for or against war: when the League's 
Council calls upon them to engage in a war to enforce a 
League order — against either a member of the League, or 

26 



SAVE AMERICA! 

a nation outside of the League, or a revolt within a mem- 
ber nation — Ireland or Canada or India for example — every 
member nation must join its associates in making- war. If 
it refuses to do so, its refusal is an act of war against the 
other nations members of the League. Some of these 
obligations are cleverly camouflaged in the League's Con- 
stitution, and have been denied by the League's advocates, 
but they are all inherent and enforcible in the League 
agreement, and are meant to be enforced when occasion 
shall arise. 

It is unthinkable that the American Congress or the 
American people will ever deliberately, with eyes open, 
thus surrender the independence of the United States, or so 
submit its future safety to the keeping of an International 
Empire controlled by the monarchies of Europe and Asia. 
It was the liberal, progressive, humane, and above all the 
pafriotic members of the Whig party, organized as the Re- 
publican party, and the liberal, progressive, humane and 
patriotic members of the Northern Democratic party, led 
by Abraham Lincoln, who saved the United States of Amer- 
ica from destruction in the 1860s. I believe the liberal, pro- 
gressive, humane and above all patriotic members of the 
Republican party, led by Senators Borah and Johnson, and 
the like element in the Northern Democratic party, led by 
Senator Reed, will save the Republic in 1919. I believe it 
because I should regard myself as a traitor to my country 
if I doubted its will and its ability to defeat so gross and 
palpable a scheme for its destruction as a free and sover- 
eign nation. 

What the League Really Means: Back of all the pious, 
peace-forever make-believe, the evident practical purposes 
of the League of Nations as proposed to us are these: 

1. To create a super-sovereignty with authority to em- 
ploy the armed land and sea forces of all its member states 
against any one of them, or against any insurrectionary 
element in any one of them — against the United States of 
America quite as surely as against any other member state. 

27 



SAVE AMERICA! 

2. To suppress with force all popular uprisings against 
the existing political, social, industrial and financial orders 
everywhere on earth. Thus America's wealth and Ameri- 
ca's man-power, conscripted as occasion might require, 
would underwrite England's eternal mastery of Ireland, 
India and the other willing or unwilling subject peoples 
held in thrall by the Thames Trust — ^the oligarchy that 
owns and rules England and with England's navy rules the 
seven seas. 

3. To guarantee the payment of more than four hun- 
dred billions of dollars, principal and interest, of the mem- 
ber states' war debts, by unloading the lion's share of it 
upon the United States as the member state whose people 
are best able to pay it. 

4. To destroy the Monroe Doctrine and undo the work 
of a century by making the American Republics, North 
and South, once more subordinate to European domination. 

5. To oppose with armed force the genuine demo- 
cratization of government or industry anywhere on earth. 

HeU's Pavement: The proponents of secession in 1860 
meant well. They never doubted the righteousness of their 
cause. They believed the poor black man was sub-human, 
and the poor white man only partly human, as compared 
with members of the owning and ruling class and its pro- 
fessional servitors. Their intentions, judged from their 
own standpoint, were admirable. The same is true of the 
proponents of the International Empire proposed in the 
name of a League of Nations. Its advocates are passion- 
ately convinced their cause is righteous. Their intentions, 
also, are from their own standpoint impeccable. Hell is 
paved with such intentions — summed up all the way down 
history in the purpose of the self-assumed Superior Person 
to rule the supposed Inferior Person for the Inferior Per- 
son's "good" — and the Superior Person's profit. Lincoln, 
the only people's man that ever sat in the American White 
House, made the Superior Person's assumption ridiculous 
forever when he said that no man is good enough or 
wise enough to rule another without his consent. Not- 

28 



SAVE AMERICA! 

withstanding the damnable, traitorous, un-American and 
unconstitutional "laws" which the League's advocates have 
enacted an'd brutally enforced during recent time to destroy 
free thought, free speech and a free press in this country, 
I freely concede their right, equal with my own, but not 
a damn bit superior to my own, to advocate their cause 
with spoken word, with printed page, with moving picture 
and with whatever other means of propaganda their finan- 
cial backers may provide. I even concede ex-President 
Taft's right to denounce all Americans who decline to ac- 
cept his fat-wit arguments on this subject as fools, scoun- 
drels or disloyalists. Let them lay on! Let the debate 
wax hot and the blackthorns fall heavy. I have had more 
than a sufficiency of censors and suppression during the 
past two years. It is time for real Americans once more to 
stand erect, free men, sovereign citizens of the world's 
greatest Republic and assert their will for the guidance 
of their servants who lately have assumed the mien and 
port of masters. It is time for the American press to con- 
quer the cowardice that has held it half-paralyzed and to 
resume with its full power its indispensable function as 
printer, distributor and interpreter of the news. Thomas 
Jefferson stated a profound truth when he said newspapers 
without a government were to be preferred rather than a 
government without newspapers — real newspapers, aware 
of their function and brave enough to perform it. It is 
time, in short, for real Americans to tell the Washingrton 
witch-burners, gag-artists, cranks, tax-eaters and pro- 
European boot-lickers to get to hell out of the road or be 
walked into the dirt the next time we all go to the polls 
to give orders. 

What Has Happened: Germany, aspiring (its ruling 
and owning class so aspired: its common people and the 
common peoples of all other European countries, dreaded 
war and prayed for peace in 1912 when I walked and 
talked with them), to seize Great Britain's post as master 
of Europe and leader in international trade, challenged 
Britain and Britain's allies to mortal combat. Germany 

29 



SAVE AMERICA! 

was winning its fig-ht. Germany believed it could win 
quicker and at less cost if it could shut off American sup- 
plies from Germany's enemies. So Germany made war on 
the United States, at sea, without the formality of a 
declaration of war. Germany believed her U-boats could 
shut off America's shipments to Germany's enemies. Ger- 
many believed the United States could not send a real 
army to Europe. The United States sent a real army — the 
best fighting" army Europe ever saw. That army's punch, 
delivered just when Germany had the Allies on the ropes 
and slipping-, put Germany down and out. The American 
navy, working with Britain's, whipped the German U-boats 
utterly. We went across the Atlantic to lick a nation that 
jumped us without fair cause. We have done the job we 
went to do. We should now make a speedy peace, bring 
our men home and get back to our own tasks. But we 
don't do that. With all Europe visibly going to the devil 
for want of a peace basis, our President delays the peace- 
making in order first to create a League of Nations. 
Now he comes home for a few days. He sends word ahead 
by wireless bidding the American Congress not to discuss 
the League scheme until he arrives to explain it. Caesar 
might have addressed the Roman Senate in its decadence 
in that fashion. We shall soon learn whether or not the 
American Senate is in its decadence. 

What Our Boys Are IJeaming: They are learning that 
Europeans of all breeds regard us with a mixture of envy, 
fear, contempt and hatred. Our boys are learning the 
curious fact that while the different European breeds hate 
each other, and fight each other, and blackguard each 
other, they do it all pretty much as members of a rowdy 
family do such things. They all regard the Americans 
over there as outsiders. If we stay long enough we shall 
merit and receive the treatment usually accorded the 
chivalrous man who interferes in a family row; we shall 
have the lady clawing our face while the gentleman lams 
us with a whiffletree. And before they get through they 
will both pick our pockets. They envy us for our national 

30 



SAVE AMERICA ! 

wealth. They fear us for the punch they have seen our 
boys deliver against the Germans. They hold us in con- 
tempt as international Rubes — fool spenders, easy marks. 
They hate us because at heart they know us, mass for mass 
and man to man, to be incomparably their betters — a new 
breed product of a new continent nurtured in freedom and 
plenty. If ever they get us netted, as African hunters net 
the lion, in their League of Nations Scheme giving them 
authority to rule us by outvoting us, they will gang up 
against us and then God save America — unless we happen 
to have a he-man and a real American like the late Theo- 
dore Roosevelt on watch in the White House. 

No Ijeagues or Alliances for America: I have just read 
the Editor's leader in Reedy's Mirror for February 21, and 
I hasten to admit, for myself, that I do oppose my coun- 
try's entrance into any international league or alliance 
whatsoever. The Wilsonian League, as proposed in its con- 
stitution, is a peculiarly atrocious betrayal of American 
sovereignty, but I am equally opposed to the suggested 
alternative of an alliance with the so-called Entente na- 
tions, or any one of them. America can and should stand 
alone, as she has always stood. So standing, our influence 
for peace and justice around the world will be infinitely 
greater than it can be if we subordinate our sovereignty in 
the manner proposed, or if we surrender any part of our 
freedom of action by allying ourselves with any other 
power. The whole world now knows what we can do, 
under arms. Not within the memory of any man now liv- 
ing will any power or combination of powers risk defeat by 
attacking us. No nation nor combination of nations will 
ever hereafter fail to respect the clearly expressed will of 
the American Republic, standing alone, sovereign and free 
from entanglements of any character, the mightiest mili- 
tary power and the world's foremost exemplar of that Lin- 
colnian ideal toward which the whole world is rapidly 
moving — government of the people, by the people and for 
the people. The proponents of the Wilsonian League of 
Nations will not dare submit it to a vote of the American 

31 



SAVE AMERICA! 

people. They will try to jam it through without consulting 
the people's wishes. This fact alone brands it as an in- 
tentional betrayal of the American people's most sacred 
rights and their most vital interests. We have had too 
much of jamming things through regardless of the popu- 
lar will. This time "they shall not pass!" 

The President's Boston Address: The President's Bos- 
ton address is four columns of impatient orders for us here 
at home to dig deeper, work harder, and live leaner for his 
adopted children across the water; plus two or three para- 
graphs of praise of himself as the man who supplied the 
winning ideals for the war and the man who can upset any 
European government if it dares disobey him; plus a typical 
ward politician's racial appeal to our Polish, Slavonic anft 
other recent European immigrants to support him in be- 
half of their kinsmen in Europe; plus the usual propa- 
gandistic bunk about how the Europeans love and trust us; 
but not one line to answer Reed's and Borah's charge that 
his League constitution is a betrayal of this country's sov- 
ereignty, nor one word of concern for the welfare of the 
American people. His invitation to the League's opponents 
to "test the sentiment of the nation" is unpleasantly remi- 
niscent of his repeated, and repeatedly forgotten, pledges 
of "pitiless publicity." If by testing the sentiment of the 
nation he m^ans a polling of the voters of the country 
upon this issue solely, his challenge should be promptly ac- 
cepted and arrangements made for a national referendum. 

FRANK PUTNAM. 



American Opinion. 

Sevraith Installinent. 



Milwaukee, Wis., March 2, 1919. 
Editor of Reedy's Mirror: 

"To Hell With Hope": Quoting the title of your leader 
for February 28, I'll say that insofar as the allusion is to 
Europe's hope of tricking this country into paying a dollar 

32 



SAVE AMERICA! 

of Europe's war bills — and that is Europe's real hope from 
the British-Wilsonian League of Nations scheme — I heart- 
ily endorse your leader's title — to hell with it. Europe, on 
the testimony of Allied press and statesmen, wants the 
United States to assume payment of the lion's share of the 
Allied war debts, dating from the start of the war in July, 
1914. Europe wants the League of Nations to assume pay- 
ment of all war pensions — of which the lion's share would 
be paid in Prance and England, and the lion's share would 
be paid by the United States. 

This country saved England, Prance, Belgium and Italy 
because we had similar and simultaneous business with 
their enemies. We are under no obligation to pay their 
debts. We'll pay our own, and go about our business. Mr. 
Wilson may believe the plain people of the United States 
are willing to toot the $400,000,000,000 bill incurred by the 
criminal insane governments of Europe. If so, he will not 
be left long in ignorance of his error. We sympathize 
heartily with the peoples of Europe, who hadn't a word 
to say about the war, who all dreaded and hated it, and 
who were driven like sheep to slaughter in it, and we'll 
approve any generous gifts within reason, ourselves con- 
tributing to the limit of our several abilities, for their 
immediate relief. That goes without saying. And we are 
willing that our government, speaking for us, shall declare 
our purpose hereafter as heretofore to exert our utmost in- 
fluence, short of war, for fair play between the other peo- 
ples of the world. But if our government attempts to pledge 
us, without our consent, to submit to be drawn into foreign 
wars at the behest of other governments than our own, 
we'll repudiate that pledge at the first general election, and 
kick out of office the administration that gave it. As for 
the Wilson administration, we're going to give it the boot 
as emphatically as we did to the Taft outfit in 1912. Make 
no mistake about that, Mr. Editor. That package is wrap- 
ped, addressed and ready for delivery, regardless of what 
may take place meanwhile. This used to be a free country 
and we mean to make it free again. 

33 



SAVE AMERICA! 

Fiddling While Rome Bums: Mr. Wilson returns to 
Europe without a cong^ressional vote of confidence in what 
The Chicago Tribune truthfully calls his "British League of 
Nations." He returns, the dispatches tell us, as stubbornly 
as ever determined to postpone the making- of peace until 
after the League of Nations scheme shall have been agreed 
upon by the allied and associated powers. Meanwhile, for 
want of a peace basis upon which to re-establish industry, 
political and industrial anarchy creeps daily further west- 
ward. Europe is in flames, and the peace conference is too 
busy drafting a constitution and by-laws for the fire com- 
pany to get busy with the hose. 

A IJeagiie of Autocracies: Seven weeks ago I denounced 
the Wilsonian League of Nations scheme as a league of 
governmental autocracies, meant not to serve the peoples 
of the world, but to hold them in perpetual bondage to the 
present owning and ruling classes for further exploitation. 
I wrote — and write — not as a radical but as a conservative, 
desiring to save the best of the present order during the 
inevitable transition to a new order. Comes now The Lon- 
don Nation, saying: 

"Wilson must know better than any of us that the will 
of the peoples of the earth does not enter and animate the 
groundwork of this so-called IJeague of Nations. The gov- 
ernments alone are represented in it. The fatal flaw in the 
foundation of this structure is its complete autocracy. The 
present constitution of the Ijeague will make the world 
safe, not for democracy, hut for a new and stronger 
despotism." 

The London Nation, as you know, sir, is a voice not of 
the British oligarchy, but of the British democracy. 

Hurry Our Boys Home: With a huge army of our boys 
still rotting in French mudholes for want of shipping to 
bring them home, the powers that be at Washington detach 
500,000 tons of shipping from the work of bringing them 
home to serve American exporters. Always the dollar first! 
Senator Reed spoke like a real American when he said that 
if he were in charge he would compel the British and 

34 



SAVE AMERICA! 

French governments to provide ships to bring our boys 
home, by serving notice upon them that if they did not he 
would withdraw from them every advantage of credit and 
supply which they now enjoy at our hands. Our pro-Eng- 
lish boot-lickers were swift to denounce the senator for 
that manly declaration. He can rest assured the masses of 
real Americans endorsed him. Our Anglo-maniacs are noisy 
but not numerous. We are not unlikely to need the boys 
here at home, in fighting trim, to defend this country 
against its present associates, when the governments of 
Britain, France and Italy learn that the American people 
will not foot their war bills, nor pay their war pensions, 
nor assume any obligation whatever, except that of gener- 
ous friends, for the replacement of their war losses. 

Bear in mind that this country is the only one on earth 
today that has food or raw materials or financial resources 
adequate to pay the bills swiftly falling due. More than 
once in recent days observant Americans must have read 
between the lines of the cabled statements of allied states- 
men the grim threat that we must adopt their policies or 
face their combined wrath. You must have detected the 
same suggestion in more than one of Mr. Wilson's public 
statements. His admitted acceptance of the British plan 
for the League of Nation after his own had been rejected 
lends color to the assumption that he yielded quite as much 
in fear as in a natural desire to succor his mother country. 
My answer to all such threats, open and implied, is the 
answer made by an earlier American, "Millions for defense, 
but not one cent for tribute!" 

Capital's "First Law": This is the crime of the Russian 
people — they have seized the factories and the land from 
which a small minority of private owners had excluded 
them, and they have operated the seized factories and the 
seized land to produce for themselves the necessaries of 
life. Because most of the owning class opposed them, be- 
cause it lacked sense to perceive the necessity of what they 
wished to do, many of that class went prematurely to 
bloody graves. British property interests have been wiser. 

35 



SAVE AMERICA! 

They have submitted to substantially the same compulsion 
by the workers, but have done it with suflBcient grace to 
avert blood-letting. Similarly France and Italy. 

Let no man suppose we in this country are insured 
against the seizure and operation of our great industrial 
plants by workmen revolting against enforced idteness and 
starvation. It can come to pass here, and it will come to 
pass here, if organized American capital upon any large 
scale tries at this time the old game of closing factory 
doors to stop losses due to closed markets or glutted store- 
houses. Now as never before it is incumbent upon the 
owners and operators of American capital, in their own 
most vital interest, to get every dollar busy making work 
and wages and to cut the cost of living, regardless of profit. 

The Southern Bourbon administration at Washington 
has done next to nothing to meet this situation. Nothing 
more could have been expected of it. The country's one 
hope for intelligent leadership by government, as I write 
these lines, is the hope that public opinion may compel the 
obdurate absentee president to call the new Republican 
congress in session at an early day. The Republicans have 
been as greedy in office as the Democrats- — but they have 
always had some knowledge of the practical necessities of 
business and industry. 

FRANK PUTNAM. 



American Opinion. 

Eighth Instalhnent. 



Milwaukee, Wis., March 9, 1919. 
Editor of Reedy's Mirror: 

The Issue Fairly Stated: In your courteous editorial 
comment upon these Opinions, last week, you stated fairly 
and clearly the issue between those who advocate and those 
who oppose the British-Wilsonian League of Nations 
scheme when you said: 

36 



SAVE AMERICA! 

"]\Ir. Putnam's general proposition is die Vereinigten 
Staaten ueber Alles (the United States over all) , and if, as I 
believe, tliat doctrine is error, the error is ineffective so 
long as truth is left free to combat it." 

I am for America first, the rest of the world second: 
you and other advocates of the British-Wilsonian League 
scheme are for the rest of the world first, for America 
second. 

On that issue we shall go to the American people for a 
verdict. 

Under the powerful emotional compulsion of the Presi- 
dent's pleading for endorsement of the League before its 
nafure was known — upon the most winning appeal that its 
purpose is solely to end wars — a popular referendum might 
have shown an American majority in its favor. I say might 
because today in the United States a citizen who dissents 
from the Caesarean policies of our one-man Government at 
Washington risks twenty years in prison if he dares ex- 
press his dissent in print or within the hearing of any of 
the army of m'ore than 200,000 secret service spies that has 
come into being in this country during the past two years, 
to gag public opinion at the public's expense. During those 
first days we heard only from the Wilson sycophants, the 
British boot-lickers and the dear unworldly idealists among 
us. Press and public were afraid to say what they wished 
to say. A few of us broke that spell. I am proud to have 
been one of them and prouder of my friend Reedy, that 
despite his predilections based upon a world-embracing 
altruism he was still sufficiently an American to permit me 
to express my dissent in the columns of Reedy's Mirror. 

The infamous gag law enacted by the convict-labor 
driving Bourbon administration at Washington at the be- 
hest of a President who undoubtedly foresaw that he could 
best accomplish some of his ultimate purposes if the 
American people were made afraid to discuss them or to 
express dissent from them, is a dead letter. It will pres- 
ently expire by limitation. The attempt of its sponsors to 
jam through a similar law for peace after war failed in 

37 



SAVE AMERICA! 

the final hours of the 65th Congress. No such law will 
ever hereafter be enacted in this country. We have been 
put on warning against its evil consequences, and shall 
hereafter be always on guard against it. A few Federal 
judges, like the cheap montebank Landis of Chicago, 
whose brother is the Washington lobbyist for the powder 
trust, will still from time to time conduct vilely partisan 
"trials" of citizens accused in essence of disloyalty to our 
one-man Government, and will impose brutally un-Ameri- 
can prison sentences upon them. But be sure that every 
citizen so conspired against by public servants for the 
"crime" of exercising his constitutional rights and perform- 
ing his patriotic duty, will presently be turned out of 
prison by an administration elected by the American peo- 
ple to do that act of simple justice. The Republican 
majority of the United States Senate, together with the real 
Americans among the Democratic senators from the North- 
ern States, have written "finis" to the black history of 
terrorism enacted under the Wilson gag laws administered 
by the Burleson-Gregory-House gang of slave-drivers, 
labor-haters, shoddy aristocrats, absentee landlords and 
four-flushing prohibition hypocrites from Austin, Texas. 

The American majority of the American Senate has 
made American citizens free once more to give orders to 
instead of taking orders from their public servants. 

Today the British-Wilsonian League of Nations scheme 
hasn't a ghost of a chance of obtaining approval by a 
majority of American voters in a national referendum. Its 
backers know that. They will never consent to the hold- 
ing of a referendum. Their only hope of delivering the 
United States bound and gagged into the hands of the 
British oligarchy, which by the President's own admission 
drafted the League of Nations scheme brought by him to 
us for adoption, is the faint hope that they may bully a 
two-thirds majority of the American Senate into accept- 
ing it. They will exert every ounce of compulsion at their 
command, through British-controlled American news- 
papers and British-controlled American banks, and through 

38 



SAVE AMERICA! 

associations of other hyphenated Americans who hope to 
see this country's men and money spent like water in 
behalf of their native countries, — but they will fail, if 
I know my America. Mark you this, sir, an issue 
of sheer Americanism that ploughs deeply enough to 
bring Boies Penrose of Pennsylvania and Robert M. La Pol- 
lette of Wisconsin, George Harvey of New York and 
Eugene V. Debs of Indiana shoulder to shoulder in defense 
of America's menaced liberty, is an issue which can have 
but one conclusion. The British-Wilsonian League of Na- 
tions scheme which the President insists is sacred against 
change, and which you, sir, tell us must be accepted be- 
cause it is the best we can get, is deader than a last year's 
mackerel. 

Some scheme of international concert to minimize wars 
we may adopt. I personally oppose any and all schemes 
for linking the United States of America in alliance with 
any or all European nations. I believe Europe can and 
should organize a United States of Europe, as I believe the 
peoples of Asia should organize a United States of Asia, 
and as I believe the republics of the two Americas, in- 
cluding the Dominion of Canada, when all are ready for it, 
should organize for mutual helpfulness but reserving ab- 
solute sovereignty each within its own limits, the United 
States of North and South America. The three grand con- 
tinental groups might go as far as they liked in substitut- 
ing equitable arbitration for the shock of arms in compos- 
ing their occasional differences. 

What the British-Wilsonian League Means to Us: Here, 
stripped of pious platitude and criminal camouflage, is ex- 
actly what the League of Nations constitution brought us 
by President Wilson offers us: 

1. The United States shall become one of nine votes in 
the Supreme Council of the League. The members of this 
Supreme Council shall NOT be chosen by the peoples of 
the member nations, but shall be appointed by the govern- 
ments of tJie member nations. 

39 



SAVE AMERICA! 

2. The United States shall accept membership in per- 
petuity in this Leag-ue: no means is provided for with- 
drawing from it except with the unanimous consent of all 
other member nations. 

3. This Ijeagiie's Supreme Council, acting for the 
British, Italian, Japanese and other monarchical govern- 
ments which will unquestionably always control it, will set 
up a world autocracy, supported by a conscript world army. 

4. This Lieague's Supreme Council will pool the war 
debts, war losses and war pensions of all the member na- 
tions, and will apportion them for payment by the peoples 
of the member nations, with regard primarily to the ability 
of the several peoples within the IJeague to make payment. 
As the United States is best able to pay, the United States 
will be expected and required to pay the Uon's share of 
these gigantic bills. Make no mistake about it: this is the 
real reason for Europe's passionate desire that the United 
States shall enter its Ueague of Nations. We have been 
forewarned by our ablest American correspondents — ^Mark 
SuUivan of Collier's in particular — that this is the Euro- 
pean scheme. It is inherent and enforcible in the constitu- 
tion of the proposed League of Nations. It is, I venture 
to state, the exact "supreme sacrifice" which President Wil- 
son on several recent occasions has warned us that we must 
be prepared to make. 

It is too high a price to pay for the gratification of the 
President's extraordinary vanity. Had he consulted the 
American people, we should have saved his face by warn- 
ing him against pledging us — without warrant of fact or 
law — to any such preposterous engagements. He chose not 
to consult us. He chose to move like an absolute monarch 
whose subjects were safely gsigged and terrorized into 
silence. Into the pit that he has digged for this people he 
will fall, and we shall bury him, at the next general elec- 
tion, so deep that no future president will ever dare for- 
get the constitutional limitations placed by a free people 
upon his official authority. 

5. This League's Supreme Council will determine the 

40 



SAVE AMERICA! 

size and composition of the army and navy which each 
member nation shall maintain. The British authors of the 
League scheme sent over to us have already assured Great 
Britain of continued mastery of the seas, and Britain's 
colonies of actual perpetual control of Germany's colonial 
possession taken man-fashion by force of arms. It is 
ali'cady made apparent that the United States is to be re- 
quired by this Supreme Council to maintain a standing 
army of 500,000 professional soldiers. Secretary Baker in 
this morning's papers "regrets" his "necessity" to hold 
200,000 young Americans conscripted for the European war 
in the regular army establishment until they can be re- 
placed by volunteer enlistments. Winston Churchill an- 
nounces Britain's purpose to maintain a standing army of 
900,000 conscripts, for the purposes of the League of Na- 
tions. Does this foreshadow peace? Is any man or woman 
facing these facts so blind as to believe the League's real 
purpose is to maintain peace by any other means than 
armed force: a peace of suppression and exploitation of 
the peoples everywhere around the world? 

6. This League's Supreme Council, controlled inevi- 
tably from the seat of government of the British Empire at 
London, will "appoint" each" of the militarily and financially 
stronger member nations a "mandatory" to govern and 
"protect" the exploitable smaller, backward peoples. It is 
already proposed, with no word of dissent from the one- 
man American Government at Washington, that this coun- 
try's first "mandatory" shall be Armenia. That "appoint- 
ment" if made cannot be declined without incurring the 
active displeasure of the other member nations of the 
League, nor without violent secession from the League. 
It is unthinkable, if the American people by majority vote 
authorize their government to enter the League as pro- 
posed, that we should ever repudiate our obligations so 
assumed. It is well, therefore, that we scrutinize most 
carefully, and weigh most thoroughly, the obligations so to 
be assumed. And despite the evident purpose of the Wil- 
sonian gag law to prevent it, we are going to discuss this 

41 



SAVE AMERICA! 

matter fully and freely, weigh it carefully and impose our 
will upon our servants with regard to it. 

7. Our first "mandatory" to "protect" Armenia would 
require us to send and for many years maintain an army 
of American boys in that distant, God-forsaken region in- 
habited for thousands of years by constantly warring-, semi- 
civilized elements bitterly alien to each other. A con- 
script army as matter of course — for what American hoy 
with a lick of sense or ambition would volunteer to throw 
his life away in such a futile and senseless service? Your 
son? My sons? By Grod Almighty, no I Our place is here 
in America, completing the superstructure of human lib- 
erty upon the foundations laid by our forefathers. 

The London oligarchy wants this country to assume 
with it the "white man's burden" — to rule and exploit the 
"lesser breeds without the law." We shall decline the in- 
vitation without thanks. And when we get control of our 
government at Washington back into our own hands, we 
shall root out and deport the American Republic's most 
insidious and most dangerous enemies — the paid agents, 
poUtical, financial, ecclesiastical, joumaUstic and otherwise, 
— of the British propaganda in this country — the most 
powerful alien propaganda ever launched against this 
country's intelligence and its peace and security. 

How America Is IJining Up: Dear old Bill, you are a 
brilliant Editor, pontificating in your celebrated sanctum. 
I am only a plain, old-fashioned, one-fiag, western Ameri- 
can, a practical politician these many years for sheer love 
of the game. Let me tell you how our folks are actually 
lining up on this British-Wilsonian League of Nations 
scheme. The workingmen, farmers, businessmen and most 
of the bankers are lining up against it. The preachers, 
college professors, editorial idealists and editorial servants 
of the British propaganda, and the emotional female sec- 
tion of the prohibition crowd are lining up for it. Write 
your own ticket. The workers and wealth producers op- 
pose it: the dreamers and non-producers want it. 

42 



SAVE AMERICA! 

There are eight daily papers published in Milwaukee — 
four printed in English, two in Polish, one in German, one 
in Yiddish. For the League are one paper printed in Eng- 
lish — a violently pro-English journal on all issues; both 
Polish papers, the German paper and the Yiddish paper. 
The three American dailies are against the League. Their 
combined circulation and political influence greatly exceeds 
that of the other five. The German paper is for the League 
because iTts heart is in Germany — and it knows that every 
dollar this (^untry may contribute to payment of Europe's 
war losses will mean one dollar less for Germany to pay. 
The Polish papers are for the League because their hearts 
are in Poland — and they look to the League to create and 
maintain a free Poland, backed by American dollars and 
American conscript soldiers. The Yiddish paper's heart is 
in Jerusalem — and it hopes the League may set up an in- 
dependent Jewish nation there — supported by American 
dollars and American conscripts. 

Welcome to the company, old Bill; my heart is in 
America — America first and America forever! 

Tempting Inipeachinent: Arthur Brisbane, America's 
best reporter, writes the following: 

"The President told the great crowd (at the New York 
meeting just before he sailed), that opposition to the 
Licague by Senators would prove futile; that he would bring 
back a peace treaty and a peace covenant or League so 
closely interwoven that it would be impossible to separate 
one from the other. He would leave to the Senators the 
responsibility of refusing to make the peace that the coun- 
try wants." 

If a city or state political boss proposed a trick like 
that to make the people take something they didn't want 
in order to get something else they regarded as indispensa- 
ble, he would be denounced, and properly so, as an enemy 
of the people. If President Wilson made that statement, 
he is an enemy of the people whose pay he begged for and 
whose service he swore faithfully to perform. This iis but 
one of many proofs of his amazing contempt of American 

43 



SAVE AMERICA! 

public opinion, his extraordinary eg-omania. In this in- 
stance he goes too far beyond the bounds of public 
patience: he tempts impeachment and removal from the 
presidency. While actual war was on, one-man govern- 
ment was tolerable; now that war is ended, continuance 
of an autocracy is impossible. When he told the mem- 
bers of the Democratic National Committee, his guests at 
dinner, that he "loathed the pygmy minds" of those who 
oppose his British League of Nations, and that he would 
like to hang them, he gave distressing evidence of a men- 
tal condition that clearly calls for restraint by that portion 
of the American Government which has not deserted its 
post of duty at Washington. 

His reckless refusal to call Congress in special session 
during his absence, when domestic problems of the 
gravest character demand instant governmental attention, 
is a challenge that should be accepted without a day's 
delay. The Vice-President should be sworn in as acting 
President, and should immediately summon the new Con- 
gress which the American people last November elected as 
a means of repudiating Wilsonism and restoring American- 
ism at the Federal capital. 

The new Senate being in session should by resolation 
notify the Paris peace conference that the United States 
will not accept the British- Wilsonian League of Nations 
scheme, whether it he submitted separately or interwoven 
with the terms of a treaty of peace; that if submitted, it 
should be submitted separately and apart from the peace 
treaty, so that it may be rejected and tlie peace treaty ac- 
cepted; that whatever League of Nations scheme shall be 
submitted must be submitted upon the understanding that 
it cannot be accepted by the United States until a majority 
of the American voters in a national referendum shall 
have endorsed it. 

Will William Marion Reedy, William Jennings Bryan 
and all of the other distinguished advocates of the refer- 
endum principle dare deny the American people's right to 
have a referendum upon this proposition to subvert the 

44 



SAVE AMERICA! 

American Constitution and subordinate American sover- 
eignty to an International Empire ruled from JLiondon? 

What the Whole World Wants: We all want peace. 
We want an end of the orgy of bloodshed, of billion-dollar 
graft, of idiot controversy over Utopian schemes to control 
the distant future. We want a basis upon which the 
armies can be disbanded and their men get back to their 
homes and to work. For four months past. President Wil- 
son has been the chief obstacle to the making of a speedy 
peace. He must stand out of the way and let the world 
have peace before industrial hell breaks loose on both sides 
of the Atlantic — and if he does not, then the American 
Government must pick him up and set him out of the way. 

FRANK PUTNAM. 



American Opinion. 

Ninth Installment. 



Milwaukee, Wis., March 16, 1919. 
Editor of Reedy's Mirror: 

Our Palace Revolution: A political revolution has 
taken place in the United States during the past two years. 
It was what historians call "a palace revolution." Our 
public servants at the Federal capital, assuming to be our 
rulers, have without consulting us enacted and enforced 
laws which deny self-government to the American people. 
They have done this by making it a crime for us to employ 
the only means through which intelligent self-government 
is possible. They have made laws forbidding us to discuss 
their official acts. They have prescribed, and through the 
courts they have enforced, severe prison penalties for dis- 
cussing their official acts. Hundreds of the finest men and 
women in America have been imprisoned for doing it. 
Others, like Eugene V. Debs, the best loved public man in 
America, and Victor L. Berger, the first citizen of Milwau- 
kee, are under sentence to long prison terms, for no other 
act, real or alleged, than that of publicly expressing 

45 



SAVE AMERICA! 

their opinion, as American citizens, of the oflBcial acts and 
policies of their public servants. 

Usurpation: This palace revolution was a usurpation, 
by the people^S servants, of powers which the people in 
their Federal Constitution expressly withheld from their 
public servants. This usurpation has been participated in 
by the President, by the majority members of both 
branches of the Congress, and by the Federal courts. 

The excuse given for the usurpation was the war 
emergency; the pretended necessity to suppress all vocal 
or written criticism of the administration's war policies. 
That necessity, if it in fact existed, was something new in 
American history. We never 'before engaged in a war 
which the people were not willing whole-heartedly to sup- 
port to a finish after full and free discussion of its causes, 
its purposes and its plan. Apparently the Wilson adminis- 
tration did not trust the American people to support this 
war, if left free to declare its choice. If the administra- 
tion entertained that fear, it did so because it did not 
know the American people. There has never been the 
slightest doubt that the people were willing to support this 
war whole-heartedly to a finish, reluctant as a majority 
of them undoubtedly were to enter upon it at all. 

Real Purpose of the Gag Laws: The true purpose of 
the Wilson gag laws now becomes more clearly apparent. 
That purpose appears to have been to terrorize the Ameri- 
can people into mute acceptance of the Wilsonian scheme 
to deliver the United States back into the British Empire 
under the guise of membership in a League of Nations so 
framed — by British statesmen on the President's own ad- 
mission — ^that it must with absolute certainty be controlled 
by the British Empire. 

It would be a very great personal triumph for an Amer- 
ican President, of recent and exclusively British origin, thus 
to restore to the British Empire this richest of its lost 
crown jewels. Mr. Andrew Carnegie, founder of the Fund 
to which Mr. Wilson once applied for a pension, has long 

46 



SAVE AMERICA! 

advocated this restoration — has perhaps even financed in 
part the "hands across the sea" propaganda leading up to 
it during the past two decades. 

It is an affecting picture which imagination paints In 
contemplation of the proposed home-coming of Brittania's 
erring daughter, Columbia — in tears — confessing that 
George Washington and John Hancock, Thomas Paine and 
Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams and Benjamin Franklin, 
Israel Putnam and Anthony Wayne, and God knows how 
many others, all rogues and rebels, seduced her youthful 
innocency and led her astray. 

But I fear it is too late for that picture ever to be 
realized. We have been too long a free and independent 
nation. In fact, this was a free and independent country 
from the days of President George Washington down to 
the days of President Woodrow Wilson. No earlier Presi- 
dent ever dared challenge the right of his employers, the 
American people, to criticise fully and freely the acts and 
policies of their government, either in war or in peace. 

We have had occasional disquieting intimations during 
the past twenty years that our Federal Government was 
drifting away from the people; that it was losing some- 
thing of its former sense of direct responsibility to them; 
that it was becoming steadily more and more bureaucratic 
— more a career for ambitious politicians and less an 
agency for public service; even that it was losing its regard 
for those high and imperishable ideals that animate our 
Declaration of Independence and our Constitution of the 
United States. You who are old enough will recall how 
promptly and with what nonchalance our Federal Govern- 
ment justified the order by our Philippine viceroy — was it 
Mr. Taft? — forbidding any of our Philippine subjects to 
read the American Declaration of Independence, or to 
print it, or even to own a copy of it, and making such 
reading, printing or ownership a seditious act, punishable 
by imprisonment. It worried some of us at that time to 
see our American Government repudiate the Declaration of 
Independence and go back mentally to slavery days. But 

47 



SAVE AMERICA! 

we were told and believed that it was only a temporary 
expedient; that too much liberty granted our Philip- 
pine subjects all at once would go to their heads and make 
serious trouble. It never occurred to us that in permitting 
our Federal Government to become once more half slave 
and half free w^e were paving the way for it to apply 
similar restrictions upon us here at home. We never had 
any doubt of our ability to preserve our own personal lib- 
erties guaranteed by our Federal Constitution, nor any 
doubt of our ability to keep this country free and inde- 
pendent of any other country or combination of countries, 
forever. 

It remained for President Wilson, with his gag laws and 
his British League of Nations scheme, to raise doubts on 
both points in the minds of the American people. It re- 
mained for President Wilson, virtually abdicating the 
American presidency for months at a time in order to 
assume command of the world, to pledge us without asking 
our consent to the renunciation of our national sover- 
eignty; to the assumption of vast European and Asiatic 
liabilities, and to the acceptance, for the United States of 
America, of a limited measure of home rule under the 
sovereignty of a British-controlled International Empire. 
Under the appalling spell of the world war, of his own most 
persuasive and coercive eloquence and of his supreme readi- 
ness to assume responsibility for leadership. President Wil- 
son has acquired and freely used powers far transcending 
any committed to the presidential office by our Federal 
Constitution — powers whose further unrestrained use, as 
many of us old-fashioned Americans believe, will wreck the 
Republic founded by George Washington and confirmed by 
Abraham Lincoln. When, early in 1917, a coward Con- 
gress, controlled in both branches by the Democratic party, 
abdicated its functions and its responsibilities and formally 
constituted President Wilson the first American autocrat, 
he ordered, his Congress enacted and his courts enforced 
laws under which the United States ceased, for several 
millions of its loyal but bewildered citizens, to be a free 
country. 

48 



SAVE AMERICA! 

The Republican Party's Supreme BHstoric Opportunity: 

A political counter-revolution is needed — is in fact indis- 
pensable — to repeal those laws; to liberate hundreds of 
citizens imprisoned for exercising their Constitutional 
rights; to make the American people once more free to 
employ free speech, a free press and free assemblage, the 
only means through which self-government is possible; 
and, above all, to prevent the impending sacrifice of Amer- 
ican national sovereignty upon an altar built by European 
and Asiatic Empires. 

Leadership in this political counter-revolution is the 
supreme historic opportunity of the Republican party. 
Some of that party's leaders in the United States Senate 
appear to recognize this fact fully, others dimly. The Re- 
publican party's leadership as a whole appears ready to 
accept this its second opportunity to save the Republic 
from destruction. A splendid few of the Democratic Sen- 
ators also have aligned themselves against the proposed 
betrayal; the Democratic party's leadership as a whole 
appears to have accepted the British-Wilsonian League of 
Nations scheme for perpetual American intervention in 
European and Asiatic international quarrels. 

Senator Borah's declared purpose to demand a national 
referendum on the League of Nations scheme exhibits him 
as the wisest and most courageous of the Republican lead- 
ers. The Republican party controlling both branches of 
the 66th Congress can provide for the referendum. Presi- 
dent Wilson's party, enacting and brutally enforcing laws 
to suppress public opinion and to gag free thought, has 
therein certified its fear or its contempt of popular refer- 
endums. The President and his party, it may be taken Tor 
granted, will appeal for continuance in power upon the 
issue of imposing the "supreme sacrifice" — of life, wealth 
and national sovereignty — upon this country, for the benefit 
of Europe. 

The Republican party, taking the American side of botH 
these overshadowing issues, can sweep the Democratic 
party into richly merited oblivion and in so doing can save 
the American Republic. 

49 



SAVE AMERICA! 

If the Republican leadership fails or falters — if it com- 
promises where national safety and the highest expediency 
bids it stand like a rock against ANY League or Alliance 
attempted to be jammed down the country's throat with- 
out full discussion and a national referendum, then we 
shall know that the time has come to organize an Ameri- 
can party for the regaining of our individual liberties and 
our national independence. 

FRANK PUTNAM. 



50 



SAVE AMEEICA! 



Appendix. 



Constitution of the League of Nations as Adopted at Paris, 
with an Interpretation of Its Meaning to Americans. 

PARIS, Feb. 14. — At the plenary session of the pre- 
Uminary peace conference at 3:30 o'clock this afternoon at 
the Quai d'Orsay, President Wilson, as chairman of the 
commission on the League of Nations, read and explained 
the following report: 

Covenant. 

"Preamble: In order to promote interna.tional co- 
operation and to secure international peace and security 
by the acceptance of obligations not to resort to war, by 
the prescription of open, just and honorable relations be- 
tween nations, by the firm establishment of the under- 
standings of international law as the actual rule of con- 
duct among governments, and by the maintenance of jus- 
tice and a scrupulous respect for all treaty obligations in 
the dealings of organized peoples with one another, the 
powers signatory to this covenant adopt this constitution 
of the League of Nations: 

COMMENT. 

A compact for a world autocracy, framed by autocratic 
statesmen in secret conclave, without consulting the peo- 
ples affected, is a gross denial in fact of the high preten- 
sions set forth in its preamble. 

Article I, 

"The action of the high contracting parties under the 
terms of this covenant shall be effected through the instru- 
mentality of meeting of a body of delegates representing 
the high contracting parties, of meetings at more frequent 
intervals of an executive council and of a permanent in- 
ternational secretariat to be established at the seat of the 
League. 

COM3iENT. 

No provision is made in the Constitution for the ap- 
pointment or election of this "body of delegates." Gov- 
emments as autocratic as those which conducted the war 
would of course proceed to appomt them, without consult- 
ing the peoples afifected. 

Article U. 

"Meetings of the body of delegates shall be held at 
stated intervals and from time to time as occasion may 
require for the purpose of dealing with matters within the 

51 



SAVE AMERICA! 



sphere of action of the League. Meetings of the body of 
delegates shall be held at the seat of the League or at 
other places as may be found convenient and shall consist 
of representatives of the high contracting parties. Each 
of the high contracting parties shall have one vote but may 
have not more than three representatives. 

COMMENT. 

The world has been informed that it has been agreed 
that Great Britain and" five of the British provinces or de- 
pendencies shall each have one vote in the "body of 
delegates," as against only one vote for the United States 
or any other nation member of the League. This is pro- 
vided for in Article VH, admitfing "dominions and col- 
onies." 

Article m. 

"The executive council shall consist of representatives 
of the United States of America, of the British Empire, 
France, Italy and Japan, together with representatives of 
four other states, members of the League. 

"The«selection of these four states shall be made by the 
body of delegates on such principles and in such manner 
as they think fit. Pending the appointment of these repre- 
sentatives of the other states, representatives of (blank for 
titles of nations named above) shall be members of the 
executive council. 

"Meetings of the council shall be held from time to 
time as occasion may require and at least once a year at 
whatever place may be decided on, or failing any such 
decision, at the seat of the League and any matter within 
the sphere of action of the league or affecting the peace of 
the world may be dealt with at such meetings. 

"Invitations shall be sent to any power to attend a meet- 
ing of the council at which matters directly affecting its 
interests are to be discussed and no decision taken at any 
meeting will be binding on such power unless so invited. 

COMMEIVT. 

The executive or Supreme Council of nine members 
would be composed of eight representatives of European 
and Asiatic nations, and one representative of the United 
States. Besides Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the 
United States, only four of the other nations' members of 
the League can have representation on this Supreme Coun- 
cil, which would employ a conscript world army to en- 
force its win upon all of the earth's peoples. Xo more 
monstrous autocracy was ever conceived in the brains of 

52 



SAVE AMERICA! 

cynical old men scheming with fatuous vanity to remold 
human nature and imprison evolutionary humanity in a 
straight jacket of armed legahsm. 

Article IV. 

"All matters of procedure at meetings of the body of 
delegates or the executive council, including the appoint- 
ment of committees to investigate particular matters, shall 
be regulated by the body of delegates or the executive 
council and may be decided by a majority of the states 
represented at the meeting. 

"The first meeting of the body of delegates and of the 
executive council shall be summoned by the President of 
the United States of America. 

C030IENT. 

If the American Senate does its plain duty, that first 
meeting will never he called. 

Article V. 

"The permanent secretariat of the League shall be es- 
tablished at (blank) which shall constitute the seat of the 
League. The secretariat shall comprise such secretaries 
and staff as may be required under the general direction 
and control of a secretary general of the League, who shall 
be chosen by the executive council; the secretariat shall be 
appointed by the secretary general subject to confirmation 
by the executive council. 

"The secretary general shall act in that capacity at all 
meetings of the body of delegates or of the executive 
council. 

"The expenses of the secretariat shall be borne by the 
states' members of the League in accordance with the ap- 
portionment of the expenses of the International Bureau 
of Universal Postal Union. 

COMMENT. 

More political jobs and more drafts upon the pockets 
of the taxpayers to pay political salaries. 

Article VI. 

"Representatives of the high contracting parties and 
officials of the League when engaged on the business of the 
League shall enjoy diplomatic privileges and immunities 
and the buildings occupied by the League or its officials or 
by representatives attending the meetings shall enjoy the 
benefits of extra territoriality. 

COMMENT. 
Proving that the League of Nations is planning to be 
in fact a super-State, enjoying the diplomatic privileges 

53 



S A V E AMERICA ! 

and Immunities of sovereignty-^and not to be a mere con- 
sulatory or advisory organization as some of its advocates 
have pretended. 

Article Vn. 

"Admission to the League of states not signatories to 
the covenant and not named in the protocol hereto as states 
to be invited to adhere to the covenant, requires the assent 
of not less than two-thirds of the states represented in the 
body of delegates and shall be limited to fully self-govern- 
ing countries including dominions and colonies. 

COMMENT. 

A grossly undemocratic provision that one-third of the 
member nations, with one vote added, can exclude any 
nation from membership in the IJeague. A provision that 
Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey must submit to 
the dictation of this one-third plus one of the League's 
membership, with regard to their military forces, or be 
excluded permanently from the League. This provision 
would with reasonable certainty, and at no distant data, 
drive the countries named, with Russia for a probable 
ally, into the formation of a rival League, and an ultimate 
renewal of warfare. 

Article VEd. 

"The high contracting parties recognize the principle 
that the maintenance of peace will require the reduction 
of national armament to the lowest point consistent with 
national safety and the enforcement by common action of 
international obligations, having special regard to the 
geographical situation and circumstances of each state; 
and the executive council shall formulate plans for effect- 
ing such reduction. The executive council shall also de- 
termine for the consideration and action of the several gov- 
ernments what military equipment and armament is fair 
and reasonable in proportion to the scale of forces laid 
down in the program of disarmament; and these limits, 
when adopted, shall not be exceeded without the permis- 
sion of the executive council. 

"The high contracting parties agree that the manufac- 
ture by private enterprise of munitions and implements of 
war lends itself to grave objections and direct the execu- 
tive council to advise how the evil effects attendant on 
such manufacture can be prevented, due regard being had 
to the necessities of these countries which are not able to 
manufacture for themselves the munitions and implements 
of war necessary for their safety. 

54 



SAVE AMERICA! 



"The high contracting parties undertake in no way to 
conceal from each other the condition of such of their in- 
dustries as are capable of being adapted to war-like pur- 
poses or the scale of their armaments and agree that there 
shall be full and frank interchange of information as to 
their military and naval programs. 

COMMENT. 

Providing that the IJeague's Supreme Council "shall 
determine" for each member nation "what military equip- 
ment and armament is fair and reasonable" for it to main- 
tain, and providing that "THESE LIMITS, WHEN 
ADOPTED, SHAIjIj NOT BE EXCEEDED WITHOUT 
THE PER3flSSION OF THE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL-." 
Under that provision, the representatives in the Supreme 
Council of Great Britain, Japan, Italy, France and the four 
other nations deemed by them to be worthy of member- 
ship WOULD DECIDE "what military equipment and 
armament is fair and reasonable" for the United States. 
The people nor the Goa eminent of the United States would 
NOT be permitted to determine for themselves the strength 
of oui" miUtary defenses. And, once tricked into the 
League, neither the American people nor the American 
Government could do anything to make their mihtary de- 
fenses stronger than tliose dictated by the Supreme Coun- 
cil, without — as will presently appear — being deemed to 
"have committed an act of war against all the other mem- 
bers of the League." The man who advocates acceptance 
of this scheme, after fully understanding its meaning, may 
be a "citizen of the world," or of England or France Or 
Italy or Japan or Germany — but he is NOT an American. 
Such a man, whether he be a laborer or a president, has 
forfeited liis right to speak or act for America. If he be 
a president, or other public official, who has made solemn 
oath to serve America singly and to defend America 
against the acts and machinations of her enemies, his en- 
dorsement of this scheme to deprive the United States of 
the right of self defense cannot, I insist, be regarded by 
sane men otherwise than as a deUberate violation of his 
oath of office. 

Article IX. 

"A permanent commission shall be constituted to advise 
the league on the execution of provisions of article 8 and of 
military and naval questions generally. 

55 



SAVE AMERICA! 

COM3£E]VT. 

More weasel words to clothe autocratic intention in ap- 
parent harmlessness — "advise" here meaning to "inform," 
so that the Supreme Council may enforce the super- 
national powers conferred upon it hy the League Constitu- 
tion. 

Article X. 

"The high contracting parties undertake to respect and 
preserve as against external aggression the territorial in- 
tegrity and existing political independence of all states 
members of the League. In case of any such aggression 
or in case of any threat or danger of such aggression the 
executive council shall advise upon the means by which the 
obligation shall be fulfilled. 

"No state shall be admitted to the League unless it is 
able to give effective guarantees of its sincere intention to 
observe its international obligations and unless it shall con- 
form to such principles as may be prescribed by the League 
in regard to its naval and military forces and armaments. 

COMMENT. 

Providing:, in effect, that American boys shall he con- 
scripted to help the British oligarchy suppress revolutions 
hy the Irish, Indian or other oppressed peoples held in 
bondage hy Great Britain. Providing that American boys 
shall be conscripted to maintain forever all of the national 
boundaries to be fixed by the Peace Congress. A guaranty 
that American hoys shall always thereafter he doing con- 
script service, killing and being killed, in wars between the 
jealous and gre^y Grovernments of Europe, Asia and 

finally Africa. 

Article XI. 

"Any war or threat of war, whether immediately affect- 
ing any of the high contracting parties or not, is hereby 
declared a matter of concern to the League, and the high 
contracting parties reserve the right to take any action that 
may be deemed wise and effectual to safeguard the peace 
of nations. 

"It is hereby also declared and agreed to be the friendly 
right of each high contracting party to draw the attention 
of the body of delegates or of the executive council to any 
circumstances affecting international intercourse, threaten- 
ing to disturb international peace or the good understand- 
ing between nations upon which peace depends. 

COMMENT. 

Declaring our obligation, equally with all other nations 
members of the League, to take a hand in ANY WAR OR 

56 



SAVE AMERICA! 

THREAT OF WAR, wherever it may occur upon the 
earth's surface. A League for peace? Great God Ahnighty, 
this preposterous scheme assures us notliing else so cer- 
tainly as that it would keep us almost continually at warl 

Article XII. 

"The high contracting parties agree that should disputes 
arise betwein them which cannot be adjusted by the ordi- 
nary nrocesses of diplomacy they will in no case resort co 
war^^thout previously submitting the questions and mat- 
ters Tnvoived either to arbitration or to rnqmry by the 
executive council, and until three months after the award 
bv the arbitrators or a recommendation by the executive 
Sunctl; and that they will not even then resort to war as 
agafnst a member of the League which complies with the 
award of the arbitrators or the recommendation of the 
executive council. , ^ ^x. v.- 

"In any case under this article the award of the arbi- 
trators shall be made within a reasonable time and the 
recommendation of the executive co^^^^l f Jjj,^?, ^^^« 
within six months after the submission of the dispute. 

com:ment. 

Providing for wars between nations members of the 
League and between LeagTie members and nations not m 

the League. 

Article XIH. 

"The high contracting parties agree that whenever any 
dispute or difficulty shall arise between them which they 
recognize to be suitable to submission to arbitration and 
which cin not be satisfactorily settled by diplomacy they 
will submit the whole matter to arbitration. For this pur- 
nose the court of arbitration to which the case is referred 
ffibe'the court agreed on by the P-^V^L^hiS'^ci^itrict" 
any convention existing between them. The high contract- 
fnJ parties agree that they will carry out in full food faith 
any award that may be rendered. In the event of any fail- 
ure to carry out the award the executive council fj^all pro- 
pose what steps can best be taken to give effect thereto. 

COMMENT. 

Providing for concerted war by League members upon 
any member nation that might decline to he hound by the 
verdict of a court of arbitration. 

Article XIV. 

"The executive council shall formulate plans for the 
establishment of a permanent court of international justice 
and tSs court shall, when established, be competent to 



57 



SAVE AMERICA! 

hear and determine any matter which the parties recognize 
as suitable for submission to it, for arbitration under the 
foregoing article. 

COMMENT. 

The only article in the Constitution compatible with our 
national sovereignty and common sense. The proper basis 
for an international agreement acceptable to the peoples of 
the world at this stage of their development. The free play 
of the world's sense of right and wrong — when the passing 
of autocratic government makes such free play of public 
opinion possible — ^will support the manifestly fair verdicts 
of an international court of justice, and will in fact do far 
more to prevent wars than this monstrous scheme of 
world-wide armed autocracy could ever do. 

Article XV. 

"If there should arise between states members of the 
League any dispute likely to lead to rupture, which is not 
submitted to arbitration as above, the high contracting 
parties agree that they will refer the matter to the execu- 
tive council; either party to the dispute may give notice of 
the existence of the dispute to the secretary general, who 
will make all necessary arrangements for a full investiga- 
tion and consideration thereof. For this purpose the par- 
ties agree to communicate to the secretary general, as 
promptly as possible, statements of their case, with all 
relevant facts and papers and the executive council may 
forthwith direct the publication thereof. 

"Where the efforts of the council lead to the settlement 
of the dispute a statement shall be published indicating the 
nature of the dispute and the terms of settlement, together 
with such explanations as may be appropriate. If the dis- 
pute has not been settled, a report by the council shall be 
published, setting forth, with all necessary facts and ex- 
planations, the recommendation which the council thinks 
just and proper for the settlement of the dispute. 

"If the report is unanimously agreed to by the members 
of the council other than the parties to the dispute, the 
high contracting parties agree that they will not go to war 
with any party which complies with the recommendations 
and that, if any party shall refuse so to comply, the council 
shall propose measures necessary to give effect to the rec- 
ommendation. If no such unanimous report can be made, 
it shall be the duty of the majority and the privilege of the 
minority to issue statements indicating what they believe 
to be the facts and containing the reasons which they con- 
sider to be just and proper. 

"The executive council may in any case under this 
article refer the dispute to the body of delegates. The dis- 

58 



SAVE AMERICA! 

pute shall be so referred at the request of either party to 
the dispute, proV^ided that such a request must be made 
within fourteen days after the submission of the dispute. 
In any case referred to the body of delegates all provisions 
of this article and of article 12 relating- to the action and 
powers of the executive council shall apply to the action 
and powers of the body of delegates. 

COMMENT. 

Making the Supreme Council of the IJeague the final 
judge of issues arising between nations members of the 
Ijeague, and authorizing it to employ the armed forces of 
all member nations to enforce its decisions. Thus, if 
Japan and the United States, both members of the Lieague, 
disagree witli regard to the right of Japanese subjects to 
enter and reside in this coimtry without let or hindrance 
other than shall be applied to immigrants from other 
countries, the Supreme Council — consisting of EIGHT 
European and Asiatic members and ONE American mem- 
ber, shall have final authority to decide the issue, and to 
ENFORCE ITS DECISION WITH THE AR3IED FORCES 
OF ALLi MEMBER NATIONS. Advocates of the League 
pretend that immigration is a "domestic" question. Since 
it interests always at least TWO countries, it is clearly NOT 
a domestic but an international question, and might be 
expected to come before the Supreme Council for decision 
very early in the League's career. 

I Uke the Japanese. They are a race of thoroughbreds, 
physically and intellectually. No people is their superior, 
taken as a whole, in character or natural eligibility to in- 
tercourse with the world's most enlightened peoples. But 
I do not beUeve the American people as a whole want the 
Japanese, or the Chinese or any other non-Caucasian peo- 
ple to send any considerable number of its nationals into 
this country. All that Japan thus far has asked of us is 
that if we admit ANY of her people to residence here, 
after submitting them to such fair and reasonable tests as 
we apply to immigrants from other countries, we shall so 
amend our nationaUzation laws that the Japanese ad- 
mitted may become citizens of the United States. I have 
long advocated sucli an amendment of our natui-aUzation 
law. We cannot maintain good neighborhood with a great, 
proud people, our next-door neighbors, so long as we per- 
sist in rating them unworthy of admission to our citi^en- 

59 



SAVE AMERICA! 

ship. The Japanese, being what they are, pardonably 
resent our national boorishness toward them in this re- 
spect. That they have been most patient, most concilia- 
tory, most punctilious in observance of their national 
agreements with us respectmg immigration, was character- 
istic of them. That they shall continue forever to regard 
us as friends despite our churlish refusal to admit the obvi- 
ous equaUty of their best with our best is not to be ex- 
pected. 

Here is the seed of the next great war. The British 
IJeague of Nations, in my judgment, is a step schemed by 
the far-sighted British statesmen to assure themselves, 
among other benefits, of our aid, and the aid of the other 
strong Caucasion peoples, in retaining the British grip on 
India and on Britain's Chinese dependencies, against tlie 
clearly foreshadowed purpose of awakening Asia under 
Japan's leadership to expunge Caucasian mastery over the 
last square foot of Asiatic soil. In my judgment, based upon 
something more than general knowledge of the subject, the 
United States will have sufficient difficulty in maintaining 
peaceful relations with Japan on our own account, with- 
out blindly underwriting the British Empire's inevitable 
conflict with Asia. 

Article XVI. 

"Should any of the high contracting parties break or 
disregard its covenants under article 12, it shall thereby 
ipso facto be deemed to have committed an act of war 
against all the other members of the League, which hereby 
undertake immediately to subject it to the severance of all 
trade or financial relations, the prohibition of all inter- 
course between their nationals and the nationals of the 
covenant breaking state, and the prevention of all financial, 
commercial or personal intercourse between the nationals 
of the covenant-breaking state and the nationals of any 
other state, whether a member of the league or not. 

"It shall be the duty of the executive council in such 
case to recommend what effective military or naval force 
the members of the League shall severally contribute to 
the armed forces to be used to protect the covenants of 
the league. 

"The high contracting parties agree further that they 
will mutually support one another in the financial and eco- 
nomic measures which may be taken under this article, in 
order to minimize the loss and inconvenience resulting 
from the above measures and that they will mutually sup- 

60 



S A V E AMERICA! 

port one another in resisting any special measure aimed at 
one of their number by the covenant-breaking state and 
that they will afford passage through their territory to the 
forces of any of the high contracting parties who are co- 
operating to protect the covenants of the League. 

COM3IENT. 

Providing that if, once in the League, the United States 
shall "break or disregard its covenants" — that is, refuse to 
be bound, even against our o\\*n most vital weKare, by the 
decisions of the Supreme Council composed of eight Eu- 
ropean and Asiatic members and one American—this coun- 
try "shall thereby be deemed to have ipso facto committed 
an act of war against all the other members of the 
League." They thereupon, ha\ang previously so limited our 
mihtary forces as to leave us powerless, wiU proceed to 
give us the thorough licking we shall have richly deserved 
for having been so besottedly "altruistic" as to get our- 
selves into a fix of that kind. Is it any wonder that 
Senator Brandagee of Connecticut, after hearing the Presi- 
dent "explaui" the League Constitution, felt as if he had 
been walking with AUce in Wonderland? 

Aiticle XVn. 

"In the event of disputes between one state member of 
the League and another state which is not a member of 
thi League, or between states not members of the League, 
the hfgh contracting parties agree that the state or states 
not mfmbers of the^ League shall be invited to accept the 
obligations of membership in the League, for the purpose 
of such dispute upon such conditions as the executive coun- 
cil may deem just and upon acceptance of any such invita- 
tion the above provisions shall be applied with modifica- 
tions as may be deemed necessary by the League. 

"Upon such investigation being given, the executive 
council shall immediately institute an inquiry into the cir- 
cumstances and merits of the dispute ^nd recommend such 
action as may seem best and most effectual m the 
circumstances. 

"In the event of a power so invited refusing to accept 
the obligations of membership in the League for tne pur- 
pose of such dispute and taking any action against a state 
member of the League which in the case «« ^ s^at®. ^®f " 
ber of the League would constitute a breach of article 12. 
the provisions of article 16 shall be applicable as against 
the state taking such action. 

"If both parties to the dispute when invited refuse to 
accept the obligations of membership in the League for tne 

61 



S A V E AMERICA ! 

purpose of such dispute, the executive council may take 
such action and make such recommendations as will pre- 
vent hostilities and will result in the settlement of the 
dispute. 

COMMENT. 

A brutal proposal to force nations not members of the 
League to submit to the League's dictation, in any dispute 
which may arise between a League member and an out- 
sider, and to enforce the League's decision upon such non- 
member nation with the League's conscript world army. A 
more ruthless and essentially lawless denial of the rights of 
neutral peoples to remain at peace cannot be imagined. 
Here again is clear evidence of the purpose of the creators 
of the League to set up an all-powerful world autocracy — a 
realization by law-minded schemers of the bloody dreams 
of earlier would-be conquerors. The only difference is 
that this new breed of would-be world controllers pretends 
to be motivated by pure and lofty altruistic ideals: they 
"want to do us good," whereas the ancient conquerors, less 
casuistical, made no concealment of their desire to do us 
good and plenty. Which is just what this new gang would 
do, if it could put its deal across. 

Article XVIH. 

"The high contracting parties agree that the League 
shall be entrusted vsrith the general supervision of the trade 
in arms and ammunition with the countries in which the 
control of this traffic is necessary in the common interest. 

COMMENT. 

Authorizing the European- Asiatic Supreme Council of 
the League to say what countries shall be permitted to 
make or buy war equipment. It is a fair presumption that 
the British-controlled League would deem it "necessary in 
the common interest" that no arms or ammunitions should 
ever come into the hands of the peoples of Ireland or 
India. 

Article XIX. 

"To those colonies and territories which as a con- 
sequence of the late war have ceased to be under the sover- 
eignty of the states which formerly governed them and 
which are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by 
themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern 
world there should be applied the principle that well be- 

62 



SAVE AMERICA! 



ing and development of such peoples form a sacred trust 
of civilization and that securities for the performance of 
this trust shall be embodied in the constitution of the 
League. 

"The best method of giving practical effect to this prin- 
ciple is that the tutelage of such peoples should be en- 
trusted to advanced nations who by reason of their re- 
sources, their experience or their geographical position can 
best undertake this respectively and that this tutelage 
should be exercised by them as mandatories on behalf of 
the League. 

"The character of the mandate must difCer according to 
the stage of the development of the people, the geographi- 
cal situation of the territory, its economic conditions and 
other similar conditions. 

"Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish 
empire have reached a stage of development where their 
existence as independent nations can be provisionally rec- 
ognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice 
and assistance by a mandatory power until such time as 
they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these com- 
munities must be a principal consideration in the selection 
of the mandatory power. 

"Other peoples, especially those of Central Africa, are 
at such a stage that the mandatory must be responsible for 
the administration of the territory subject to conditions 
which will guarantee freedom of conscience or religion, 
subject only to the maintenance of public order and morals, 
the prohibition of abuses such as the slave trade, the arms 
traffic and the liquor traffic and the prevention of the es- 
tablishment of fortifications or military and naval bases 
and of military training of the natives for other than police 
purposes and the defense of the territory and will also 
secure equal opportunities for the trade and commerce of 
other members of the League. 

"There are territories such as Southwest Africa and 
certain of the South Pacific Isles, which, owing to the 
sparseness of their population or their small size or their 
remoteness from the center of civilization or their geogra- 
phical contiguity to the mandatory state, and other cir- 
cumstances, can be best administered under the laws of 
the mandatory state as integral portions thereof, subject 
to the safeguards above mentioned in the interests of the 
indigenous population. 

"In every case of mandate, the mandatory state shall 
render to the League an annual report in reference to the 
territory committed to its charge. 

"The degree of authority, control or administration to 
be exercised by the mandatory state shall, if not previously 
agreed upon by the high contracting parties in each case, 
be explicitly defined by the executive council in a special 
act or charter. 

63 



SAVE AMERICA! 



"The high contracting parties further agree to establish 
at the seat of the League a mandatory commission to re- 
ceive and examine the annual reports of the mandatory- 
powers and to assist the League in ensuring the observance 
of the terms of all mandates. 

COMMENT. 

Providing that the victorious Allies shall retain the 
colonies they won from Germany, and that the United 
States shall be given a job of bag-holding for remote 
regions whicK none of the European nations can trust each 
other to handle honestly — all as "mandatories" charged 
with "a sacred trust of civilization." I admire the English 
statesmen beyond words; they are the greatest rulers since 
the Roman Empire; they get what they go after; we get 
only the privilege of glozing over their successful grab in 
sniffling, sanctimonious phrases and of footing the lion's 
share of the cost in men and money. 

Article XX. 

"The high contracting parties will endeavor to secure 
and maintain fair and humane conditions of labor for men, 
women and children both in their own countries and in all 
countries to which their commercial and industrial rela- 
tions extended; and to that end agree to establish as part of 
the organization of the League a permanent bureau of 
labor. 

COJ^IMENT. 

In wliich the Governmental autocrats, acting for the 
financial autocrats who pull the strings from behind the 
scenes, agree to recognize workingmen, women and chil- 
dren as human beings — the first recognition, and the last — 
accorded to the rank and file of mankind, or to their un- 
solicited wishes with regard to their future governments, 
in the whole text of this extraordinary document. 

Article XXI. 

"The high contracting parties agree that provision 
shall be made through the instrumentality of the League 
to secure and maintain freedom of transit and equitable 
treatment for the commerce of all states members of the 
League, having in mind, among some other things, special 
arrangements with regard to the necessities of the regions 
devastated during the war of 1914-1918. 

C03IMENT. 

What this article means its authors may know: nobody 
else has been able thus far to guess — and its authors have 
not troubled to explain. Free trade? 

64 



S A V E AMERICA! 

Article XXH. 

"The high contracting parties agree to place under the 
control of the League all international bureaus already es- 
tablished by general treaties if the parties to such treaties 
consent. Furthermore they agree that all such inter- 
national bureaus to be constituted in future shall be placed 
under control of the League. 

COMMENT. 

Initiating the super-State's bureaucracy — and extend- 
ing its authority into the routine relations between mem- 
ber nations. 

Article XXTTT. 

"The high contracting parties agree that every treaty 
or international engagement entered into hereafter by any 
state member of the League shall be forthwith registered 
with the secretary general and as soon as possible be pub- 
lished by him and that no such treaty or international en- 
gagement shall be binding until so registered. 

COMMENT. 

Providing "pitiless publicity" for international treaties 

after these shall have been made by the autocrats in 

secret, without consulting the desires of the peoples af- 
fected. In this connection, it is worth recalling that Wood- 
row Wilson in 1907, in his "Constitutional Government in 
the United States," wrote: 

"Of one of the greatest of the President's powers I have 
not yet spoken at all; his control, which is very absolute, 
of the foreign relations of the nation. The initiative in 
foreign affairs, which the President possesses without any 
restriction whatever, is virtually the power to CONTROL 
THEM ABSOLUTELY. 

"The President cannot conclude a treaty with a foreign 
power without the consent of the Senate; but he may guide 
every step of diplomacy, and to guide diplomacy is to de- 
termine what treaties must be made, if the faith and 
prestige of the government are to be maintained, tw 
NEED DISCLOSE NO STEP OF NEGOTIATION UNTIL 
IT IS COMPLETE, AND WHEN IN ANY CRITICAL MAT- 
TER IT IS COMPLETED THE GOVERN3IENT IS VIRTU- 
ALLY C03iMITTED. Whatever its disinclination, the Sen- 
ate may feel itself committed also." 

65 



SAVE AMERICA! 

It must be admitted that the President in this respect 
has practiced in 1919 what he preached in 1907, In 1907 
he told how a President capable of attempting it could 
usurp powers of absolutism which the American Constitu- 
tion clearly meant to withhold from him, and in 1919 he 
has attempted and is now attempting to usurp absolute 
control of treaty-making in exactly the way he marke<^ out 
in 1907. AS I HAVE ALREADY STATED SEVERAL 
TIMES IN THIS BOOK, THE UNITED STATES SENATE 
IS THE ONLY POWER THAT CAN DEFEAT THE 
PRESIDENT'S PLAIN PURPOSE TO SACRIFICE THIS 
COUNTRY'S INDEPENDENCE IN BEHALF OF A 
EUROPEAN-ASIATIC BRITISH- CONTROLLED LEAGUE 
OF NATIONS. The American Senate can save the country, 
and will save it, if it has the guts. The man who wouldn't 
risk his life- — to say nothing of his political job — to save 
his country's Uberty, would be unworthy to clean the Sen- 
ate spittoons, much less to speak for freemen in that august 
chamber. The Senate can keep this country out of a 
situation which the American people, once they know the 
truth, would never let it get into. If the Senate weakens 
and lets the country be dravm into the trap, we shall have 
to FIGHT our way out a little later. 

Article XXIV. 

"It shall be the right of the body of delegates from time 
to time to advise the reconsideration by states, members of 
the league, of treaties which have become inapplicable and 
of international conditions of which continuance may en- 
danger the peace of the world. 

COMMENT. 

Extending the super- State's control over its member 
nations; a further step in the gradual extinction of their 
separate sovereignties. 

Article XV. 

"The high contracting parties severally agree that the 
present covenant is accepted as abrogating all obligations 
inter se which are inconsistent with the terms thereof and 
solemnly engage that they will not hereafter enter into any 
engagements inconsistent with the terms thereof. In case 
any of the powers signatory hereto or subsequently ad- 
mitted to the League shall, before becoming a party to this 
covenant, have undertaken any obligations which are in- 

66 



SAVE AMERICA! 



consistent with the terms of this covenant, it shall be the 
duty of such power to take immediate steps to procure its 
release from such obligations. 

COMMENT. 

Requiring member nations to abandon pre-existing in- 
ternational compacts which conflict with the IJeague's Con- 
stitution. 

Article XXVI. 

"Amendments to this covenant will take effect when 
ratified by the states whose representatives compose the 
executive council and by three-fourths of the states whose 
representatives compose the body of delegates." 

COMMENT. 

Making amendments to the League Constitution practi- 
cally impossible by requiring unanimous consent of the Su- 
preme Council of nine, and consent of three-fourths of the 
nations represented in the "body of delegates." 

NOWHERE IN THE ENTIRE DOCUMENT ONE 
WORD RECOGNIZING THE RIGHT OF THE PEO- 
PLES AFFECTED TO BE CONSULTED AT ANY STEP 
IN THE FRAMING OR IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF 
THIS SCHEME FOR THE WORLD-WIDE SUBMERG- 
ENCE OF FREE PEOPLES, AND FOR TEOE CREATION 
OF A SINGLE WORLD -EMBRACING AUTOCRATIC 
SUPER- STATE. 

The American Senator who votes for this scheme votes 
consciously or ignorantly to betray his country, and to be- 
tray the highest hopes of all manldnd. 



The Monroe Doctrine 

"The question presented by the letters you have sent 
me is the most momentous which has ever been offered 
to my contemplation since that of Independence. That 
made us a nation; tliis sets our compass and points the 
course which we are to steer through the ocean of time 
opening on us. 

67 



SAVE AMERICA! 

"OUR FIRST AND FUNDAMENTAIi MAXIM SHOULD 

BE, NEVER TO ENTANGLE OURSELVES IN THE 
BROILS OF EUROPE; OUR SECOND, NEVER TO SUF- 
FER EUROPE TO INTERMEDDLE WITH CIS-ATLAN- 
TIC AFFAIRS. AMERICA, NORTH AND SOUTH, HAS A 
SET OF INTERESTS DISTINCT FROM THOSE OF 
EUROPE, AND PECULIARLY HER OWN. SHE 
SHOULD, THEREFORE, HAVE A SYSTEM OF HER 
OWN, SEPARATE AND DISTINCT FROM THAT OF 
EUROPE^" — ^Thomas Jefferson to President James Mon- 
roe, 1823. 

"The political system of the allied powers [the Euro- 
pean Holy Alliance] is essentially different in this respect 
from that of America. This difference proceeds from that 
which exists in their respective governments. And to the 
defense of our own, which has been achieved by the loss 
of so much blood and treasure, and matured by the wis- 
dom of their most enlightened citizens, and under which 
we have enjoyed unexampled felicity, this whole Nation is 
devoted. We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the 
amicable relations existing between the United States and 
those powers, TO DECLARE THAT WE SHOULD CON- 
SIDER ANY ATTEMPT ON THEIR PART TO EXTEND 
THEIR SYSTEM TO ANY PORTION OF THIS HEMIS- 
PHERE AS DANGEROUS TO OUR PEACE AND 
SAFETY. With the existing colonies or dependencies of 
any European power we have not interfered, and shall not 
interfere. BUT WITH THE GOVERNMENTS WHO HAVE 
DECLARED THEIR INDEPENDENCE AND MAIN- 
TAINED IT, AND WHOSE INDEPENDENCE WE 
HAVE, ON GREAT CONSIDERATION AND ON JUST 
PRINCIPLES, ACKNOWLEDGED, WE COULD NOT 
VIEW ANY INTERPOSITION FOR THE PURPOSE OF 
OPPRESSING THEM, OR CONTROLLING IN ANY 
OTHER MANNER THEIR DESTINY, BY ANY EURO- 
PEAN POWER, IN ANY OTHER LIGHT THAN AS THE 
MANIFESTATION OF AN UNFRIENDLY DISPOSITION 
TOWARD THE UNITED STATES. 

68 



SAVE AMERICA! 

"Our iwlicy in regard to Europe, which was adopted at 
an early stage of the wars which have so long- agitated 
that quarter of the globe, nevertheless remains the same, 
which is NOT TO INTERFERE IN THE INTERNAIi 
CONCERNS OF ANY OF ITS POWERS; to consider the 
government de facto as the legitimate government for us; 
to cultivate friendly relations with it, and to preserve 
those relations by a frank, firm, and manly policy; meet- 
ing in all instances the just claims of every power, sub- 
mitting to injuries from none. It is impossible that the 
allied powers [of Europe] should extend their political 
system to any portion of either continent [North or South 
America] without endangering our peace and happiness; 
nor can anyone believe that our southern brethren, if left 
to themselves, would adopt it of their own accord. It is 
equally impossible, therefore, that we should behold such 
interposition, in any form, with indifference." — ^Message of 
President James Monroe, 1823. 



The British Origin of the League of 
Nations Constitution. 



The Wisconsin -News, Milwaukee, March 5. 
Copyright, 1919, by Star Company. 

During President Wilson's meeting with the foreign 
relations committees of the Senate and House to discuss 
the proposed league of nations, the President was asked by 
Senator Brandegee of Connecticut: 

"How many drafts of the constitution for this proposed 
League were presented to the Paris conference of nations?" 

The President replied that there had been four, one by 
Great Britain, one by France, one by the United States and 
one by Italy. 

Senator Brandegee then inquired : 
"Which one was accepted?" 
The President replied: 
"The British." 

69 



SAVE AMERICA! 



Senator Brandegee asked what was done with the re- 
jected drafts. President Wilson said: 

"They were put aside." 

Representative. Ragsdale of South Carolina then in- 
quired: 

"Mr. President, what does the IJeague of Nations pro- 
pose to do as regards Ireland?" 

The President answered: 

"The question of Ireland is a domestic matter outside 
the province of the League of Nations." 



Lodge Resolution on League and 
Names of Republican Signers. 



Washington, March 4, 1919. 
By the Associated Press: 

Senator Lodge's resolution on the League of Nations 
and the names of the 3 7 Republican Senators and Senators- 
elect supporting his position, follow: 

"Whereas, Under the Constitution, it is a function of 
the Senate to advise and consent to, or dissent from, the 
ratification o'f any treaty of the United States and no such 
treaty can become operative without the consent of the 
Senate expressed by the affirmative vote of two -thirds of 
the Senators present; and 

"Whereas, Owing to the victory of the arms of the 
United States and of the nations with whom it is associated, 
a peace conference was convened and is now in session at 
Paris for the purpose of settling the terms of peace; and 

"Whereas, A committee of the conference has proposed 
a constitution for a League of Nations and the proposal is 
now before the peace conference for its consideration; 

"Now, Therefore, Be It Resolved, By the Senate of the 
United States in the discharge of its constitutional duty of 
advice in regard to treaties that it is the sense of the Sen- 
ate that while it is their desire that the nations of the world 
should unite to promote peace and general disarmament, 

70 



SAVE AMERICA! 



the constitution of the League of Nations in the form now 
proposed to the peace conference should not be accepted 
by the United States; 

"And Be It Resolved Further, That it is the sense of the 
Senate that the negotiations on the part of the United 
States should immediately be directed to the utmost expedi- 
tion of the urgent business of negotiating peace terms with 
Germany satisfactory to the United States and the nations 
with whom the United States is associated in the war 
against the German Government, and the proposal for a 
League of Nations to insure the permanent peace of the 
world should be then taken up for careful and serious 
consideration." 

Names of Republican Signers. 

The Republican Senators and Senators-elect whose 
names were on the list read by Senator Lodge as favoring 
his resolution on the League follow: 

Senators: Lodge, Massachusetts; Knox, Pennsylvania; 
Sherman, Illinois; New, Indiana; Moses, New Hampshire; 
Wadsworth, New York; Pernald, Maine; Cummins, Iowa; 
Warren, Wyoming; Watson, Indiana; Sterling, South Da- 
kota; Preylinghausen, New Jersey; Harding, Ohio; Hale, 
Maine; Borah, Idaho; Brandegee, Connecticut; Calder, New 
York; Penrose, Pennsylvania; Page, Vermont; McLean, 
Connecticut; Prance, Maryland; Curtis, Kansas; Spencer, 
Missouri; Townsend, Michigan; Johnson, California; Dill- 
ingham, Vermont; Lenroot, Wisconsin; Poindexter, Wash- 
ington; Sutherland, West Virginia; Smoot, Utah, and 
Gronna, North Dakota. 

Senators-elect: Edge, New Jersey; Keyes, New Hamp- 
shire; McCormick, Illinois; Phipps, Colorado; Newberry, 
Michigan; Ball, Delaware. 



71 



